Male mate preferences in mutual mate choice: finches modulate their songs across and within male-female interactions.

ABSTRACT: Male songbirds use song to advertise their attractiveness as potential mates, and the properties of those songs have a powerful influence on female mate preferences. One idea is that males may exert themselves maximally in each song performance, consistent with female evaluation and formation of mate preferences being the primary contributors to mate choice. Alternatively, males may modulate their song behaviour to different degrees in the presence of different females, consistent with both male and female mate preferences contributing to mutual mate choice. Here we consider whether male Bengalese finches, Lonchura striata domestica, express mate preferences at the level of individual females, and whether those preferences are manifest as changes in song behaviour that are sufficien

SUBMITTER: Heinig A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4167625 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature