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Walter D. Koenig and Janis L. Dickinson, Cooperative breeding in vertebrates: studies of ecology, evolution, and behavior

reduce the costs of parasitism for the host and in turn increase the selection for offensive traits and host specialisation in the cuckoo. The defending host is able to mitigate the cost of being parasitised by attacking the cuckoo before it has had a chance to lay its egg, or by refusing oddlooking eggs, by removing the parasite from the nest, or abandoning the nest altogether. However, owing to the titfor-tat nature of a co-evolutionary arms race, the cuckoo’s traits are subject to reciprocal selection in the context of the evolved host’s defences. Davies presents research showing how brood parasites get around such host defences by evolving traits such as hawk, egg, and chick mimicry which combine to make brood parasites some of the most interesting tricksters in the natural world. The middle chapters are crafted to engage with the general readership as much as the student of nature. The text is part history lesson, part detective novel. However, for the twitcher, ornithologist, or budding biologist, it can also be read as a comprehensive introduction into how brood parasites manipulate hosts and how hosts have evolved defences in response (and how the science of behavioural ecology proceeds both theoretically and experimentally). The book explains in depth how knowledge about cuckoos has been collected by researchers from all over the world and over the course of hundreds of years (see the extensive referencing in the notes section). If this were not enough, the book takes us on a journey, beginning with forays into the English countryside and frequently to Wicken Fen – Britain’s oldest wildlife reserve, and Davies’ long-time field site. It then steers the reader through the African savannah to visit unorthodox egg collectors and keen behavioural ecologists, and then ventures off to the West Indies island of Hispaniola to measure variation in egg colour and pattern in the Village Weaverbird(Ploceus cucullatus). Japan and Australia are also visited along the way. The book carries the reader through a literature that is more than 2500 years old, exploring the state of knowledge of brood parasitism from the writings of Hesoid, Pliny the Elder, and Aristotle amongst many other historical figures through to Davies and his collaborators in the present day. Davies’ text is illustrated by James McCallum. One might see these images as superfluous, given Davies’ rich descriptions, but bird lovers will delight in both the art and documentary of them. In the later chapters, Nick Davies goes some way to recontextualising the seemingly egregious behaviours of the brood parasite, and he does so with an understanding that is more sympathetic and inquisitive than many of his predecessors. We discover that the cuckoo is not only the ‘monster’ – it is to be seen also as a victim. The cuckoo, like many other migratory birds, is suffering a decline, one that has seen Davies unable to welcome a new cuckoo fledgling to Wicken Fen during the 2012 breeding season – an absence not recorded in more than 30 years of his tenure. The reasons for this decline are not clear, but this sad silence appears to have some of the various hallmarks of human intervention, making study on this species more prescient. In conclusion, the defining feature of the book is that it surveys the scientific landscape and unfolds the joy of what it is to ask and answer scientific questions, of which Davies provides many examples throughout. One is left impressed by the cuckoo (both bird and book), the defending hosts, the accumulation of hard-earned science, and the author’s prose. Davies’ book delivers a text that breaths new life into what his predecessors – Lack, Tinbergen, and Chance – inspired in him: a scientific enthusiasm for the natural world. I see this book as being a similar source of enthusiasm for birders and field biologists interested in behavioural biology, alternative breeding strategies, and an otherwise fascinating species that is an evolutionary marvel deserving of its place in Darwin’s entangled bank.