Tap dancing birds: the multimodal mutual courtship display of males and females in a socially monogamous songbird.

ABSTRACT: According to classical sexual selection theory, complex multimodal courtship displays have evolved in males through female choice. While it is well-known that socially monogamous songbird males sing to attract females, we report here the first example of a multimodal dance display that is not a uniquely male trait in these birds. In the blue-capped cordon-bleu (Uraeginthus cyanocephalus), a socially monogamous songbird, both sexes perform courtship displays that are characterised by singing and simultaneous visual displays. By recording these displays with a high-speed video camera, we discovered that in addition to bobbing, their visual courtship display includes quite rapid step-dancing, which is assumed to produce vibrations and/or presumably non-vocal sounds. Dance performances did not

SUBMITTER: Ota N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4994120 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature