Female ornamentation and territorial conflicts in collared flycatchers (Ficedula albicollis).
Female ornaments in species with conventional sex roles often indicate individual quality, but the evolutionary forces maintaining them are less clear. Sexual competition for breeding opportunities may represent an important role for female signals, especially in polygynous species, but there is little experimental evidence for this. The wing patch size (WPS) of female collared flycatchers indicates age and body condition and predicts social mating patterns. We challenged nest-building females with decoy females of varying WPS and found that the aggressive response of residents increased with decoy WPS, suggesting a role for this female ornament in territorial competition. Our results explain why female WPS predicts territorial distances when mated to a polygynous male and indicate that the role of WPS in female competitive interactions is similar to that in males of the same population.
Behavioural Ecology Group, Department of Systematic Zoology and Ecology, Eötvös Loránd University, Pázmány Péter sétány 1/C, 1117 Budapest, Hungary. everest@ludens.elte.hu
Gergely
G
Hegyi
László Zsolt
LZ
Garamszegi
Marcel
M
Eens
János
J
Török
D000374:Aggression / Q000523:psychology; D000375:Aging / Q000502:physiology; D000818:Animals; D003163:Competitive Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003220:Conflict, Psychological; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D052586:Mating Preference, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D009425:Nesting Behavior; D012726:Sexual Behavior, Animal / Q000502:physiology*; D020308:Songbirds / Q000502:physiology*; D013731:Territoriality; D014921:Wings, Animal / Q000033:anatomy & histology*