Species-level repertoire size predicts a correlation between individual song elaboration and reproductive success.

ABSTRACT: Birdsong has long been considered a sexually selected trait that relays honest information about male quality, and laboratory studies generally suggest that female songbirds prefer larger repertoires. However, analysis of field studies across species surprisingly revealed a weak correlation between song elaboration and reproductive success, and it remains unknown why only certain species show this correlation in nature. Taken together, these studies suggest that females in numerous species can detect and prefer larger repertoires in a laboratory setting, but larger individual repertoires correlate with reproductive success only in a subset of these species. This prompts the question: Do the species that show a stronger correlation between reproductive success and larger individual repertoi

SUBMITTER: Robinson CM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6662282 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature