Accurate recognition of salient cues is critical for adaptive responses, but the underlying sensory and cognitive processes are often poorly understood. For example, hosts of avian brood parasites have long been assumed to reject foreign eggs from their nests based on the total degree of dissimilarity in colour to their own eggs, regardless of the foreign eggs' colours. We tested hosts' responses to gradients of natural (blue-green to brown) and artificial (green to purple) egg colours, and demonstrate that hosts base rejection decisions on both the direction and degree of colour dissimilarity along the natural, but not artificial, gradient of egg colours. Hosts rejected brown eggs and accepted blue-green eggs along the natural egg colour gradient, irrespective of the total perceived dissimilarity from their own egg's colour. By contrast, their responses did not vary along the artificial colour gradient. Our results demonstrate that egg recognition is specifically tuned to the natural gradient of avian eggshell colour and suggest a novel decision rule. These results highlight the importance of considering sensory reception and decision rules when studying perception, and illustrate that our understanding of recognition processes benefits from examining natural variation in phenotypes.

Departamento de Ecología Genética y Evolución Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales Universidad de Buenos Aires C1428EHA Buenos Aires Argentina

Department of Animal Biology School of Integrative Biology University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign Urbana IL 61801 USA

Department of Biology Evolution and Optics of Nanostructures Group Ghent University Ghent 9000 Belgium

Department of Biology Long Island University Post Brookville NY 11548 1300 USA

Department of Biology University of Akron Akron OH 44325 USA

Department of Psychology Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York New York NY 10065 USA

Department of Zoology and Laboratory of Ornithology Palacký University Olomouc 77146 Czech Republic

Division of Ecology and Evolution Research School of Biology Australian National University Canberra 2601 Australia

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Variation in multicomponent recognition cues alters egg rejection decisions: a test of the optimal acceptance threshold hypothesis

Probing the Limits of Egg Recognition Using Egg Rejection Experiments Along Phenotypic Gradients

Does contrast between eggshell ground and spot coloration affect egg rejection?

Egg discrimination along a gradient of natural variation in eggshell coloration

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Dryad
10.5061/dryad.mm3kr

figshare
10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3672193