Scientists studying scrub jays found that it is common for 'helpers' to assist mated pairs of birds in raising their young. The helpers lack territories and mates of their own. Instead, they help the territory owners gather food for their offspring. Propose a hypothesis to explain what advantage there might be for the helpers to engage in this behavior instead of seeking their own territories and mates. How would you test your hypothesis? If your hypothesis is correct, what kind of results would you expect your tests to yield?

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Welcome back. Everyone, here's our next question. It says many species of cuckoo birds are known to be brood parasites. They usually do not build their own nests. Instead they lay their eggs in other bird's nests, which of the following behaviors do cuckoo birds use to lessen the competition with the victim's eggs or hatchlings? Well, we can recall for more content videos that a parasitic relationship is one in which one member of the relationship benefits and the other is harmed. So cuckoo birds are brood parasites benefit by laying their eggs in another bird's nest. The host bird is harmed um due to its offspring's inability to survive this parasitic relationship. So not only does a cuckoo bird lay its eggs in another bird's nest, it has several strategies to ensure that its offspring is the one that survives and to lessen the competition from the host bird's own eggs or hatchlings. We notice that choice D. Is all options are correct. So there is the chance that we have more than one correct answer here. Choice A. Says the mother cuckoos will remove other eggs from the victim's nest. This is correct. The mother bird often comes in, tosses out one of the victims eggs and then lays her own egg. In addition to this, not only does the mother cuckoo toss out eggs, the cuckoo hatchlings tend to hatch earlier than the host birds, hatchlings and the hatchlings will toss out the other eggs after they hatch. Just kind of a little bit disturbing. If you ask me choice B. Says the cuckoo hatchlings get rid of other hatchlings from the nest. So along with tossing eggs. These little baby cuckoos toss other hatchlings, the hatchlings of those birds out of the nest. So like many parasitic relationships. This is kind of just a little bit creepy. Um We now have two correct answers. If I'm on a test, I would just go ahead and select choice D. All options are correct and move on. But to be thorough, we'll look at Choice C. Choice C. Says the cuckoo hatchlings vigorously beg for food as soon as they hatch. And this is correct and this lessens the competition because these hatchlings come out immediately began demanding food and the host parent birds are kept busy bringing food to these demanding cuckoos and their own offspring get less food in that trade off. So that's another strategy and yes, Choice D. All options are correct. These are all behaviors used to lessen competition. Since incubating eggs and feeding hatchlings are very energy intensive. The cuckoo uses these strategies to make sure its offspring benefit from that energy expenditure and out compete. The house birds own offspring. See you in the next video

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Key Concepts

Cooperative Breeding

Inclusive Fitness

Hypothesis Testing