Brood Parasite
Brood parasites are organisms that use the strategy of brood parasitism, a kind of kleptoparasitism found among birds, fish or insects, involving the manipulation and use of host individuals either of the same (intraspecific brood-parasitism) or different species (interspecific brood-parasitism) to raise the young of the brood-parasite. This relieves the parasitic parent from the investment of rearing young or building nests, enabling them to spend more time foraging, producing offspring etc. Additionally, the risk of egg loss to raiders such as raccoons is mitigated, by having distributed the eggs amongst a number of different nests. As this behaviour is damaging to the host, it will often result in an evolutionary arms race between parasite and host.
Read more about Brood Parasite: Avian Brood Parasites, Parental-care Parasitism, Insect Brood Parasites
Famous quotes containing the words brood and/or parasite:
“Speech is often barren; but silence also does not necessarily brood over a full nest. Your still fowl, blinking at you without remark, may all the while be sitting on one addled egg; and when it takes to cackling will have nothing to announce but that addled delusion.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“When the ivy has found its tower, when the delicate creeper has found its strong wall, we know how the parasite plants grow and prosper.”
—Anthony Trollope (1815–1882)