title: Female in-nest chatter song increases predation.
abstract: Female song is an ancestral trait in songbirds, yet extant females generally sing less than males. Here, we examine sex differences in the predation cost of singing behaviour. The superb fairy-wren (Malurus cyaneus) is a Southern Hemisphere songbird; males and females provision the brood and produce solo song year-round. Both sexes had higher song rate during the fertile period and lower song rate during incubation and chick feeding. Females were more likely than males to sing close to or inside the nest. For this reason, female but not male song rate predicted egg and nestling predation. This study identifies a high fitness cost of song when a parent bird attends offspring inside a nest and explains gender differences in singing when there are gender differences in parental care.
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia sonia.kleindorfer@flinders.edu.au.
authors.forename: Sonia
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Kleindorfer
authors.affiliation: School of Biological Sciences, Flinders University, GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, Australia.
authors.forename: Christine
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Evans
authors.affiliation: Konrad Lorenz Institute for Ethology, Department of Integrative Biology and Evolution, University of Veterinary Medicine, Savoyenstrasse 1a, Vienna 1160, Austria.
authors.forename: Katharina
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Mahr
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001315:Australia; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D008425:Maternal Behavior; D009425:Nesting Behavior; D010063:Ovum; D046109:Passeriformes / Q000502:physiology*; D010332:Paternal Behavior; D011235:Predatory Behavior; D012727:Sex Characteristics; D014828:Vocalization, Animal
keywords: Maluridae; nest attendance; predation risk; reproductive cost; song rate; superb fairy-wren