NO. 4 AVIAN GENUS CLAMATOR — FRIEDMANN 93 



rise to a larger, pectorally heavily striped derivative that became 

 levaillantii, and, somewhat later, in southern Asia, to an equally large, 

 red-winged form, the present stock of which is coromandus. This 

 last-named group, in turn, gave rise to what developed into glandarius, 

 which emigrated westward from northern India to the Near East, 

 Egypt, and to the western portion of the Mediterranean, the Iberian 

 Peninsula, Morocco, and Algeria. Much later this form suddenly 

 expanded its range southward to encompass much of Africa south as 

 far as Cape Province. 



The genus evolved very early from a primordial Cuculine stock 

 that was already parasitic in its breeding, but that had not yet de- 

 veloped the evicting behavior in the young or the tendency to host- 

 adaptive variable egg morphism with the concomitant development of 

 host-specific gentes. In the course of its subsequent history Clamator 

 never developed either of these features as did the more specialized 

 genus Cuculus. Its original eggshell coloration was plain, unmarked 

 white as in C. jacohiniis serraUis, and in this form there is no sign 

 of host selection with species reference to tgg similarity. From this 

 was developed a plain bluish or blue-green egg coloration, as still 

 present in the two northern races of jacobinus, pica and the nominate 

 subspecies, as well as in levaillantii and in coromandus. In these 

 segments of the genus the choice of fosterers has been arrived at 

 with definite correlation to general egg similarity. Finally, in the 

 most advanced species, glandarius, we have a patterned, speckled or 

 blotched, egg coloration superimposed on a pale greenish ground color, 

 and in this case the inference to be derived from the evidence is that it 

 developed together with an early fixation upon magpies as hosts. 



In the case of glandarius, with its unusually fine egg adaptation 

 toward this host choice, we find evidence that this restriction, both in 

 fosterer and in geographic range, became disadvantageous for the 

 species as a whole, and that a large segment of its population under- 

 went a great geographic emigration, in a way comparable to what in 

 morphological evolution has been termed an "escape from specializa- 

 tion." 



The start of this escape from host restriction on a fosterer of very 

 limited sympatry had already begun in eastern Egypt where Corvus 

 was utilized in the absence of Pica. The glandarius population that 

 expanded over much of sub-Saharan Africa was apparently the less 

 perfectly adapted portion of its species in its old Mediterranean home- 

 land, as is still evidenced by the great disparity in host-parasite egg 

 ratios shown in its uncorrelated multiple parasitism in its newer 



