Sexual competition and courtship disruptions: why do male bowerbirds destroy each other's bowers?

Pruett‐Jones, Stephen; Pruett-Jones, M. A.

doi:10.1006/anbe.1994.1084

Cited by 43 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…Bower destruction rates at Taunton were around 20 times lower than those reported at Bullamon Plains (Borgia 1995a), averaging 0.0013/day in 1998 and 0.0014/day in 1999 (Madden 2002). One explanation for variation in destruction rate across species and populations is the variation in interbower distances, with the prediction that marauding may increase in profitability and occurrence as interbower distance decreases (Pruett‐Jones & Pruett‐Jones 1994, Hunter & Dwyer 1997). However, bowers at Taunton were almost twice as close to each other as those at Bullamon Plains.…”

Section: Materials Methods and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpopulation differences exhibited by Spotted Bowerbirds Chlamydera maculata across a suite of male traits and female preferences

Madden¹

2006

Ibis

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Male Spotted Bowerbirds Chlamydera maculata build and decorate structures, bowers, that act as targets for female choice. Bower construction, orientation and distribution all differed between two populations, as did rates of intrasexual aggression. Although there was a broad similarity in classes of decorations used on bowers, the exact types and positioning varied between populations. For two intensively studied populations, different decorations appeared to be the best predictors of mating success. In both populations, male owners of high‐quality bowers obtained higher mating success. Male display intensity differed dramatically between populations, and females appeared to differ in the attention that they paid to the male's own display movements. Females also differed in the position that they took to observe a male's display. These variations suggest that differing selective forces may be acting on the elaboration of extreme male display traits across populations. I comment on how this variation can be used to illuminate current hypotheses for the evolution of bowers.

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Section: Materials Methods and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Interpopulation differences exhibited by Spotted Bowerbirds Chlamydera maculata across a suite of male traits and female preferences

Madden¹

2006

Ibis

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“…However, the manipulation did affect other events occurring at the bower, speci cally increasing the number and duration of destruction events at bowers with supplemented berries. Such destruction events, common in several bowerbird species including spotted bowerbirds, act to reduce the overall quality of the bower and are generally carried out by other bower owners (Borgia 1985a;Borgia & Mueller 1992;Pruett-Jones & Pruett-Jones 1994). Studies of several other species of bowerbirds have shown that an anthropomorphic measure of bower quality is related to mating success (Borgia 1985a;Borgia & Mueller 1992;Lenz 1994;Uy & Borgia 2000).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bower decorations attract females but provoke other male spotted bowerbirds: bower owners resolve this trade-off

Madden

2002

Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B

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Elaborate secondary sexual traits offset the costs that they impose on their bearer by facilitating reproductive bene ts, through increased success in intrasexual contests or increased attractiveness to choosy mates. Some traits enhance both strategies. Conversely, I show that spotted bowerbirds Chlamydera maculata may face a trade-off. The trait that best predicts their mating success, numbers of Solanum berries exhibited on a bower, also provokes increased intrasexual aggression in the form of bower destructions by neighbouring bower owners, which reduce the quality of the male's bower. At natural berry numbers, levels of mating success in the population are skewed, but levels of destruction do not vary with berry number. When berry numbers are arti cially exaggerated, increased levels of destructions occur, but mating success does not increase. When offered excess berries, either to add to the bower or arti cially placed on the bower, bower owners preferred to use numbers of berries related to the number that they displayed naturally. This decision is made without direct experience of the attendant changes in destruction or mating success. This indicates that bower owners may assess their own social standing in relation to their neighbours and modulate their display accordingly.

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“…If male quality is correlated with stealing ability, then individual differences in the numbers of decorations at bowers, brought about by differences in male stealing behaviours, may allow females to identify highquality mates. Though theoretical models suggest that decoration theft and bower destruction are evolutionarily stable strategies in comparison with the alternative strategy of bower guarding (Pruett-Jones and Pruett-Jones 1994), the frequency of decoration theft appears to be highly variable both within and among species (Borgia and Gore 1986;Borgia and Mueller 1992;Hunter and Dwyer 1997;reviewed in Frith and Frith 2004), and this may affect the relationship between male-male competition and signal honesty (Borgia and Mueller 1992).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Stealing rates in the Great Bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis): effects of the spatial arrangement of males and availability of decorations

Doerr

2009

Emu - Austral Ornithology

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Abstract.Competitive interactions between males can affect mate-choice decisions of females, so it is important to understand the factors that underlie variation in the frequency and intensity of male-male interactions. In bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchidae), two hypotheses have been proposed to explain within-and between-species variation in the rate at which males steal each other's decorations. Males may steal more frequently as inter-bower distances decrease because this reduces the time and energy costs of travelling between bowers, or they may steal more frequently when bowers contain relatively few decorations, compared with bowers in other populations or species, because this leads to an increase in the value of decorations to males. I compared stealing rates in two populations of Great Bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis) in Queensland, Australia, in order to assess these hypotheses. Males at one site, Dreghorn, had fewer decorations, higher nearest-neighbour distances (NND), and fewer males within a 1-km radius of their bowers (termed bower density) than males at the Townsville site. Dreghorn males stole decorations at a lower rate and interacted with fewer individuals, though there was no difference between sites in the rate at which males stole decorations from their nearest neighbours. Within sites, stealing rates were not related to decoration numbers, and partial correlations revealed that stealing rates were correlated with bower density, not NND. These results suggest that differences in the spatial arrangement of males, particularly bower density, may explain variation in stealing rates both within and between populations, though alternative explanations, such as differences in resource availability, are also relevant.

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Sexual competition and courtship disruptions: why do male bowerbirds destroy each other's bowers?

Cited by 43 publications

References 0 publications

Interpopulation differences exhibited by Spotted Bowerbirds Chlamydera maculata across a suite of male traits and female preferences

Interpopulation differences exhibited by Spotted Bowerbirds Chlamydera maculata across a suite of male traits and female preferences

Bower decorations attract females but provoke other male spotted bowerbirds: bower owners resolve this trade-off

Stealing rates in the Great Bowerbird (Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis): effects of the spatial arrangement of males and availability of decorations

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