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Female Songbirds Fickle In Choosing Their Mates
January 26, 2008 at 12:35 PM
General Health News
Scientists studying the mating habits of lark buntings, a migratory songbird that breeds in the prairies of Colorado, found that females consistently showed strong preferences toward males with certain traits.
But rather than consistently choosing one particular trait, such as beak size, as a sign of male fitness, the females vary the traits from year to year, depending on their prevailing tastes.
For example, while beak size was the top trait for female lark buntings in 1999, body feather colour was all the rage in 2003.
Until now, researchers had generally assumed that factors driving the evolution of what females look for in partners remain unchanged over time.
But the study of the lark bunting, by Alexis Chaine and Bruce Lyon at the University of California, Santa Cruz, challenges the idea, showing that there are changing fashions in what traits females think are attractive.
Chaine said that many other species would also select their ideal mate depending on the existing trends.
During their 5-year study, Chaine and Lyon noted the plumage and size characteristics of 384 lark buntings (an average of about 80 per year) in Colorado.
They tracked how these physical characteristics related to male reproductive success by monitoring the males offspring each year, with genetic tests to confirm paternity. They expected to find only one or two characteristics that were selected above all others, but they report that the characteristics that were selected changed from year to year.
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