Male mate preferences in mutual mate choice: finches modulate their songs across and within male–female interactions

Abstract

Male songbirds use song to advertise their attractiveness as potential mates, and the properties of those songs have a powerful influence on female mate preferences. One idea is that males may exert themselves maximally in each song performance, consistent with female evaluation and formation of mate preferences being the primary contributors to mate choice. Alternatively, males may modulate their song behaviour to different degrees in the presence of different females, consistent with both male and female mate preferences contributing to mutual mate choice. Here we consider whether male Bengalese finches, Lonchura striata domestica, express mate preferences at the level of individual females, and whether those preferences are manifest as changes in song behaviour that are sufficient to influence female mate choice. We tested this idea by recording songs performed by individual unmated males during a series of 1 h interactions with each of many unmated females. Across recording sessions, males systematically varied both the quantity and the quality of the songs that they performed to different females. Males also varied their song properties throughout the course of each interaction, and behavioural tests using female birds revealed that songs performed at the onset of each interaction were significantly more attractive than songs performed by the same male later during the same interaction. This demonstration of context-specific variation in the properties of male reproductive signals and a role for that variation in shaping female mate preference reveals that male mate preferences play an important role in mutual mate choice in this species. Because these birds thrive so well in the laboratory and are so amenable to observation and experimentation across generations, these results yield a new model system that may prove especially advantageous in disentangling the role of male and female mate preferences in shaping mutual mate choice and its long-term benefits or consequences.

Forebrain circuits underlying the social modulation of vocal communication signals

“…Social context affects song structure in a number of species, including the Bengalese finch (Sakata et al, ; Hampton et al, ; Sakata and Brainard, ; Dunning et al, ; Heinig et al, ). For example, relative to spontaneous, UD songs, songs directed at females during courtship interactions (FD songs) consist of syllables that are more stereotyped in structure and arranged in more stereotyped sequences.…”

“…Just as syllable structure is less variable during FD song than UD song, the sequencing of syllables at branch points is less variable when Bengalese finches produce FD song than UD song (Sakata et al, ; Hampton et al, ; Sakata and Brainard, ; Heinig et al, ). Consistent with previous data, we found that syllable sequencing was less variable when FD birds produced FD song on the experimental day than UD song on the control day.…”

“…Adult Bengalese finch song consists of syllables arranged in stereotyped sequences as well as sequences in which syllable transitions vary from rendition to rendition (“branch points”; Sakata and Brainard, ; Jin, ; Warren et al, ). Stereotyped and branch point sequences were identified during manual labeling and confirmed using bigram plots (e.g., Okanoya and Yamaguchi, ; Kakishita et al, ; Fujimoto et al, 2012; Heinig et al, ). We analyzed the effects of social context on syllable sequencing at branch points by computing the probability of different syllable transitions (e.g., Sakata et al, ).…”

“…Similarly, the FD songs of male Bengalese finches are faster and more stereotyped in structure than their UD songs (Sakata et al, ; Hampton et al, ; Sakata and Brainard, ; Dunning et al, ). In Bengalese finches but not zebra finches, the sequencing of syllables is also more stereotyped during FD song than UD song (Kao and Brainard, ; Sakata et al, ; Hampton et al, ; Sakata and Brainard, ; Heinig et al, ). Relatively little is known about how the nervous system generates the diversity of context‐dependent changes to song, although there have been some insights into the neural mechanisms underlying the social modulation of syllable structure and song tempo in the zebra finch (e.g., Jarvis et al, ; Kao et al, ; Kao and Brainard, ; Leblois et al, ; Stepanek and Doupe, ; Leblois and Perkel, ).…”

Melodic males and flashy females: Geographic variation in male and female reproductive behavior in red‐eyed treefrogs (Agalychnis callidryas)

“…Recent studies focusing on courtship dynamics have acknowledged the interactive nature of the behaviors that precede mate choice (Medina, Garcia, Urbina, Manjarrez, & Moyaho, ; Yoshikawa, Ohkubo, Karino, & Hasegawa, ). In a mutual mate choice scenario, both males and females exhibit courtship displays to advertise individual quality (Tobias, Viswanathan, & Kelley, ; Heinig et al., ); thus, partner assessment is a reciprocal process, such that both sexes process information on the quality of a mate. This can occur even in scenarios of unequal investment between the sexes, as in many frogs where females invest more in reproduction and are therefore thought of as the choosy sex.…”