hello tweets,

i thought you all might be intereste din reading this story about the
unappreciated cowbird ....

Deborah Wisti-Peterson email:nyneve at u.washington.edu
Department of Zoology, University of Washington, Seattle, Wash, USA
Visit me on the web: http://students.washington.edu/~nyneve/
<><><>Graduate School: it's not just a job, it's an indenture!<><><>


---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 10 May 2000 07:51:13 -0700
Subject: [Fwd: Cowbird Casanovas' feathery brawn and winning songs have
brainpower behind them]

>
>
>
> FOR RELEASE: May 9, 2000
>
> Contact: Blaine P. Friedlander Jr.
> Office: (607) 255-3290
> E-Mail: [1]bpf2 at cornell.edu
>
> ITHACA, N.Y. -- While ornithologists consider cowbirds the parasites
> of the bird world -- commandeering the nests of other birds, hoarding
> their food and causing starvation -- Cornell University behavioral
> researchers know these songbirds have a redeeming quality: They carry
> an important, evolutionary tune.
>
> Like the Mick Jaggers of music, male cowbirds attract females by
> strutting their masculine feather colors or by their singing ability.
> But the Cornell scientists have found that both songs and mating
> rituals correlate with the size of the cowbird brain.
>
> "The female cowbirds are looking only for your genes, so that if
> you're a male cowbird, you had better look darn good," says Mark E.
> Hauber, a Cornell doctoral student in neurobiology and behavior. "You
> had better advertise yourself."
>
> Before this latest research, data that showed a connection between an
> animal's brain size and mating behavior relied mostly on guesswork,
> says Timothy J. DeVoogd, Cornell associate professor of psychology.
> "This is the first time this information has been correlated in a
> parasitic bird species. No one has ever done this before. Surprisingly
> there is a close correlation between brain size and a cowbird's
> abilities and behavior."
>
> The research, "Sexual Dimorphism and Species Differences in HVC
> Volumes of Cowbirds," appeared in Behavioral Neuroscience, a journal
> of the American Psychological Association (Vol. 113, Number 5.)
>
> Cowbirds, which are found in North, Central and South America, are
> medium-sized black birds, that, in some cases, such as shiny cowbirds,
> also have brown feathers. The birds' songs sweep a large range of
> frequencies, sounding "like a gargoyle, very bubbly, not very
> melodious -- like water dripping from a faucet," says Hauber.
>
> The researchers note that the cowbird appears to have brought
> Darwinian theory clearly into focus. "We think that visual and sexual
> selection factors seem to go hand-in-hand," says
>
> Hauber. "The better the song, the better the feathers, the better the
> mate. In a way, we can tell from the brain size who gets mates and who
> doesn't."
>
> Inside the cowbird brain is a high vocal center, or HVC, and the
> scientists have correlated HVC size with sexual differences and sexual
> preferences. To do this, Hauber and DeVoogd studied the shiny cowbird,
> the screaming cowbird and the bay-winged cowbird, all native to South
> America.
>
> They learned that the promiscuous, male shiny cowbirds have large
> brains and sing forcefully, while the females, whose brains are
> smaller, do not. While the screaming and bay-winged male cowbirds also
> sing for sex, these birds are monogamous. Interestingly, both male and
> female bay-winged cowbirds have a similar HVC size -- and the females
> sing like the males.
>
> Hauber says that cowbirds are a great scientific model. "Through them
> we do a lot of learning about their reproductive and social behavior,
> signals in mating and male competition."
>
> In addition to Hauber and DeVoogd, the research was authored by Nicola
> Clayton, University of California, Davis; Alex Kacelnik, University of
> Oxford, United Kingdom; and Juan C. Reboreda, Universidad de Buenos
> Aires, Argentina. The research was supported by funding from the
> National Institutes of Health, a Wellcome Trust grant, the Whitehall
> Foundation, the British Council and Conicet. Hauber also received a
> Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellowship.
>
> -30-
>
>
> References
>
> 1. mailto:bpf2 at cornell.edu
> 2. http://www.news.cornell.edu/imonth00/May00.html
> 3. http://www.news.cornell.edu/
>