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Alternative reproductive strategies in Common Pochards (Aythya ferina)
Šťovíček, Ondřej ; Albrecht, Tomáš (advisor) ; Bryja, Josef (referee)
Conspecific brood parasitism (CBP) is one of few alternative reproductive strategies exmployed by females. CBP is common in birds because of their mode of reproduction (ovipary), which allows relatively simple dumping own eggs to foreign nest. This strategy is especially common in birds with precocial young, such as waterfowl. In this study, common pochard (Aythya ferina) was the model organism for study of CBP via molecular methods. It is the very first evidence of this kind of parasitism in non-colonial and non-cavity nesting duck species, based on detection of parasitic eggs via microsatellites markers. A set of 17 microsatellites markers (10 of these were newly found and specific for our species) was optimised for detection of rate of parasitism and relatedness between females in whole population. It was found that CBP is surprisingly high in our species, the parasitic eggs (39 % of 252 eggs) were found in 89% of nests. Despite the fact that females preferentially nest near relatives individuals, parasitic females parasitize equally nests nearby and nests in longer distance. However, no preferential parasitism of related individuals was found. Cost of parasitism seems relatively low for both, host and parasite, in our species. This is in accordance with previous finding that common pochard's...
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