Evaluating mate choice in the zebra finch

Do female association preferences predict the likelihood of reproduction?

“…Even in the guppy (Poecilia reticulata), one of the best studied systems in sexual selection, such studies are infrequent and either include the effect of male-male competition (Bischoff et al 1985) or use female sexual responses to male displays rather than just association time as a measure of female preference (Houde 1988;Pitcher et al 2003). In general, experiments addressing the link between female mating preferences based on association times and male mating success tend either to confound the effect of mating preference and malemale competition when assessing male mating success (Bischoff et al 1985;Clayton 1990;Lehtonen & Lindström 2008) or to produce unclear results (Gabor 1999;Aspbury & Basolo 2002;Rutstein et al 2007). …”

When mothers make sons sexy: maternal effects contribute to the increased sexual attractiveness of extra-pair offspring

“…Males to which more females responded positively during the choice trials were considered to be more attractive. Choices made by zebra finch females in this set-up have been shown to reflect mate choice situations [27].…”

“…We placed a male and a female together in a cage and recorded the response of the female to the courting male during a 5 min period [27]. For each male (n ¼ 67 wild-caught males and 65 domesticated males), this was repeated with 10 different, randomly chosen (wild and domestic) females on separate days.…”

“…The trials were carried out under full-spectrum light in a cage similar to the housing cages. For each male, we calculated the proportion of females showing a positive response during the trials, and used this proportion as a measure of 'male attractiveness' (see Rutstein et al [27] for a detailed description of the protocol). Males to which more females responded positively during the choice trials were considered to be more attractive.…”

“…In addition to the colour ornaments, we recorded the total amount of song (in seconds) that a male produced during the preference trials, and calculated for each male an average song duration over all trials [27].…”