The Modeling Of Avian Visual Perception Predicts Behavioural Rejection Responses To Foreign Egg Colours

How do birds tell the colours of their own and foreign eggs apart? We evaluate a model of avian physiological visual acuity to determine its accuracy as a predictor of song thrush Turdus philomelos discriminating artificial eggs and rejecting them from her clutch. We show that the large degree of variation of egg coloration between clutches (compared with variation within a clutch) should provide sufficient contrasts for rejecting experimental conspecific parasitism.

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Filed under: Biology on July 4th, 2008