Female finches are picky but pragmatic when choosing a mate
Wallflowers dump their eggs in other birds' nests to avoid the costs of
being difficult to please

Date:
November 4, 2021
Source:
PLOS
Summary:
Female zebra finches are choosy but flexible when it comes to
finding a mate, allowing them to avoid the fitness costs of being
too selective when competition for males is high, researchers
report.



FULL STORY ========================================================================== Female zebra finches are choosy but flexible when it comes to finding a
mate, allowing them to avoid the fitness costs of being too selective
when competition for males is high, report Wolfgang Forstmeier at the
Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Germany, and colleagues, in a
study publishing Nov. 4 in the open-access journal PLOS Biology.


========================================================================== Female mating preferences are thought to drive sexual selection in males,
but overly choosy females risk missing out on a mate when competition over preferred males is intense. To investigate the fitness costs of female choosiness, researchers studied four captive populations of zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata), a monogamous species with regional song dialects,
in which females prefer to mate with males of the same dialect.

The birds were housed in 10 aviaries, each with 12 females and 12
males of the same genetic population but different dialects. In each
aviary, two song dialects were represented at a 2:1 ratio, such that
four females could choose from eight males with the same song dialect
(relaxed competition), while the other eight females had to compete
over four preferred males (high competition). They found that while 31%
of females experiencing high competition chose to pair with a male
of a different dialect, 26% refused to settle and remained unpaired
throughout the experiment. However, these "wallflowers" produced the
same number of successful fledglings as breeding pairs, on average,
because they were able to use alternative reproductive strategies,
such as sneaking their eggs into the nests of successful couples.

The study is the first to quantify the fitness costs to females of being
too picky. By helping to overcome these costs, behavioral flexibility
can facilitate the evolution of female choice and male sexual selection
in monogamous species, the authors say.

Forstmeier adds, "Our study asks how females cope with
the situation that their mate preferences are difficult to
satisfy. The answer is: more successfully than we had expected." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by PLOS. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Wolfgang Forstmeier, Daiping Wang, Katrin Martin, Bart Kempenaers.

Fitness costs of female choosiness are low in a socially monogamous
songbird. PLOS Biology, 2021; 19 (11): e3001257 DOI: 10.1371/
journal.pbio.3001257 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211104140805.htm

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