Abstract

Interspecific brood amalgamation in waterfowl has been hypothesized to be an extension of intraspecific brood amalgamation behavior that increases the likelihood of successful amalgamation by increasing the range of potential recipients. I tested this hypothesis using recent phylogenetic information. The analysis revealed that the likelihood that a lineage carries the interspecific brood amalgamation state increases significantly when the lineage also carries the intraspecific amalgamation state, thus supporting the hypothesis. The likelihood of a transition to interspecific brood amalgamation was similar across categories of several ecological and life-history factors, including nesting dispersion, nesting substrate, type of brood care, and level of reproductive effort. Nevertheless, several lineages carrying the intraspecific brood amalgamation state failed to show the interspecific counterpart, suggesting that the expression of interspecific brood amalgamation tendencies can be constrained by other factors.

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