What makes a nest-building male successful? Male behavior and female care in penduline tits

István Szentirmai, Jan Komdeur and Tamás Székely

Behavioral Ecology, 2005, vol. 16, issue 6, 994-1000

Abstract: Why do females increase parental effort when caring for the offspring of attractive males? First, attractive males may be poor fathers so that their females are compelled to increase their own contribution in order to fledge some young (the partner-compensation hypothesis). Second, females mated to attractive males may be willing to increase their parental effort to reap high indirect benefits for their offspring, and in turn males can decrease their own contribution (the differential allocation hypothesis [DAH]). We investigated these hypotheses in the penduline tit Remiz pendulinus, a small passerine bird that has sequential polygamy by both sexes and strict uniparental care either by the male or the female. We focused on two sexually selected male traits: nest size and nest-building behavior. We show that male care is unrelated to nest-building behavior, whereas females are more likely to care for the offspring of those males that spend more time nest building. Females also more likely care for the offspring of males that build large nests. Consequently, the reproductive success of males increases with nest size and nest-building behavior. Our results are consistent with the DAH and suggest that nest-building behavior and nest size are under postmating sexual selection in penduline tits. Copyright 2005.

Keywords: differential allocation; nest building; parental care; penduline tit; reproductive success; sexual selection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/ari080 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:beheco:v:16:y:2005:i:6:p:994-1000

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Behavioral Ecology is currently edited by Louise Barrett

More articles in Behavioral Ecology from International Society for Behavioral Ecology Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().