Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Splendid Fairy-wrens: demonstrating the importance of longevity
- 2 Green Woodhoopoes: life history traits and sociality
- 3 Red-cockaded Woodpeckers: a ‘primitive’ cooperative breeder
- 4 Arabian Babblers: the quest for social status in a cooperative breeder
- 5 Hoatzins: cooperative breeding in a folivorous neotropical bird
- 6 Campylorhynchus wrens: the ecology of delayed dispersal and cooperation in the Venezuelan savanna
- 7 Pinyon Jays: making the best of a bad situation by helping
- 8 Florida Scrub Jays: a synopsis after 18 years of study
- 9 Mexican Jays: uncooperative breeding
- 10 Galápagos mockingbirds: territorial cooperative breeding in a climatically variable environment
- 11 Groove-billed Anis: joint-nesting in a tropical cuckoo
- 12 Galápagos and Harris' Hawks: divergent causes of sociality in two raptors
- 13 Pukeko: different approaches and some different answers
- 14 Acorn Woodpeckers: group-living and food storage under contrasting ecological conditions
- 15 Dunnocks: cooperation and conflict among males and females in a variable mating system
- 16 White-fronted Bee-eaters: helping in a colonially nesting species
- 17 Pied Kingfishers: ecological causes and reproductive consequences of cooperative breeding
- 18 Noisy Miners: variations on the theme of communality
- Summary
- Index
11 - Groove-billed Anis: joint-nesting in a tropical cuckoo
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 September 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction
- 1 Splendid Fairy-wrens: demonstrating the importance of longevity
- 2 Green Woodhoopoes: life history traits and sociality
- 3 Red-cockaded Woodpeckers: a ‘primitive’ cooperative breeder
- 4 Arabian Babblers: the quest for social status in a cooperative breeder
- 5 Hoatzins: cooperative breeding in a folivorous neotropical bird
- 6 Campylorhynchus wrens: the ecology of delayed dispersal and cooperation in the Venezuelan savanna
- 7 Pinyon Jays: making the best of a bad situation by helping
- 8 Florida Scrub Jays: a synopsis after 18 years of study
- 9 Mexican Jays: uncooperative breeding
- 10 Galápagos mockingbirds: territorial cooperative breeding in a climatically variable environment
- 11 Groove-billed Anis: joint-nesting in a tropical cuckoo
- 12 Galápagos and Harris' Hawks: divergent causes of sociality in two raptors
- 13 Pukeko: different approaches and some different answers
- 14 Acorn Woodpeckers: group-living and food storage under contrasting ecological conditions
- 15 Dunnocks: cooperation and conflict among males and females in a variable mating system
- 16 White-fronted Bee-eaters: helping in a colonially nesting species
- 17 Pied Kingfishers: ecological causes and reproductive consequences of cooperative breeding
- 18 Noisy Miners: variations on the theme of communality
- Summary
- Index
Summary
Species and study area
The Groove-billed Ani (Crotophaga sulcirostris) has a rare type of breeding system that sets the species apart from most other cooperative breeders. Breeding groups consist of two or more females and their mates. Females in these groups lay their eggs in a single nest and the joint clutch is cared for by all members of the group. This type of breeding system is known as joint-nesting plural breeding (Brown 1978). Plural breeders are species in which social units may contain two or more breeding females. Joint-nesting occurs when these females lay their eggs in a single nest. Other examples of joint-nesting plural breeders are the Acorn Woodpecker (Melanerpes formicivorus) and the Pukeko (Porphyrio porphyrio), which are discussed in Chapters 14 and 13, respectively. Those chapters and this one illustrate the considerable differences that exist among the species that share this breeding system, particularly in their mating systems and the numbers of non-breeding helpers.
Joint-nesting in the Groove-billed Ani probably did not evolve recently. The Smooth-billed Ani (C. ani), the Greater Ani (C. major) and the Guira (Guira guira) are also joint-nesting plural breeders (Davis 1940a,b, 1941; R. Macedo, personal communication). All four of these species are members of the Crotophaginae, in the family Cuculidae. Cuckoos have a range of breeding systems, including monogamy, polyandry and interspecific brood parasitism.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Cooperative Breeding in BirdsLong Term Studies of Ecology and Behaviour, pp. 333 - 356Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1990
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