Mutual mate guarding with limited sexual conflict in a sex-role-reversed shorebird

Abstract

Mate guarding is typically considered a male strategy to protect paternity. However, under some circumstances, females might also benefit from guarding their mate. Female mate guarding might be particularly important in socially polyandrous species in which females compete for access to care-giving males. Because males also benefit from being near their partner to avoid paternity loss, pair members may have a mutual interest in mate guarding in polyandrous species. We studied the time spent together and movements that lead to separation, as behavioral measures of mate guarding, in the classically polyandrous red phalarope (Phalaropus fulicarius). We equipped 64 breeding pairs with miniaturized telemetry loggers with GPS to assess variation in mate-guarding intensity in relation to breeding phenology and season, nest attendance, and the occurrence of extrapair paternity. We show that red phalarope pairs were almost continuously together in the days before clutch initiation with no sex bias in separation movements, indicating mutual contribution to mate guarding. Our results suggest that in red phalaropes, both pair members guard their mate, with limited sexual conflict arising through biases in the operational sex ratio and a trade-off with male nest attendance. We found no clear relationship between mate-guarding intensity and the occurrence of extrapair paternity. In this non-territorial socially polyandrous species, mutual mate guarding might be the process underlying the evolution of a brief but strong social pair bond, with no other purpose than producing a clutch for a care-giving male.