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  • Publications
  • Influence
Cuckoos versus reed warblers: Adaptations and counteradaptations
View on Elsevier
Territorial defence in the speckled wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria): The resident always wins
  • N. Davies
  • Environmental Science
    Animal Behaviour
  • 1 February 1978
View on Elsevier
Signals of need in parent–offspring communication and their exploitation by the common cuckoo
TLDR
It is shown that the cuckoo, reared alone in the nest, presents a deficient visual display and elicits the same amount of care as a reed warbler brood only by compensating with its exaggerated vocal display, and succeeds not through mimicry of the host brood begging signals, but by tuning into the sensory predispositions of its hosts.
View on Nature
Cuckoo adaptations: trickery and tuning
TLDR
The twin hurdles of effective trickery in the face of evolving host defences and difficulties of tuning into another species' life history may together explain why obligate brood parasitism is relatively rare.
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Recognition errors and probability of parasitism determine whether reed warblers should accept or reject mimetic cuckoo eggs
TLDR
It is shown that below a threshold of 19-41% parasitism, the warblers should accept mimetic cuckoo eggs because the costs of rejection outweigh the benefits, whereas above this threshold they should reject.
View on Royal Society
Deep croaks and fighting assessment in toads Bufo bufo
TLDR
This paper shows experimentally that male toads, Bufo bufo, settle contests for the possession of females by means of vocalisations that give a reliable signal of body size and hence of fighting ability.
View on Springer
Genetic evidence for female host-specific races of the common cuckoo
TLDR
Genetic evidence that gentes are restricted to female lineages is provided, with cross mating by males maintaining the common cuckoo genetically as one species, and there is differentiation between gentes in maternally inherited mitochondrial DNA, but not in microsatellite loci of nuclear DNA is shown.
View on Nature
Strategic Variation in Mobbing as a Front Line of Defense against Brood Parasitism
View on Elsevier
Rapid decline of host defences in response to reduced cuckoo parasitism: behavioural flexibility of reed warblers in a changing world
TLDR
On Wicken Fen and nearby watercourses eastern England, parasitism by cuckoos, Cuculus canorus, declined from 26% and 16% of reed warbler nests in 1985 and 1986 to 2 to 6% of nests in 1995 to 1997, owing to a decline in cuckoo.
View on Royal Society
Competitive mate searching in male common toads, Bufo bufo
View on Elsevier
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