Gangster Birds Running Protection Racket Give Insight Into Coevolution

[Moontanman]

Gangster Birds Running Protection Racket Give Insight Into Coevolution

 

 

Andy Radford (University of Bristol) and a pied babbler in the Kalahari. (Credit: © Matthew Bell, University of Cambridge)

 

ScienceDaily (Nov. 18, 2010) — Like gangsters running a protection racket, drongos in the Kalahari Desert act as lookouts for other birds in order to steal a cut of their food catch. The behaviour, revealed in research funded by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) published in Evolution and reported in Nature's Research Highlights, may represent a rare example of two species evolving from a parasitic to a mutualistic relationship.

 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/11/101118083905.htm