It's Not Just the Song: Male Visual Displays Enhance Female Sexual Responses to Song in Brown-Headed Cowbirds

The condor

Adrian L. O'Loghlen¹ 

关键词: Brown-headed Cowbird;    Molothrus ater;    females;    audiovisual signals;    song displays;    sexual responses.;   

DOI  :  10.1525/cond.2010.090216

学科分类：动物科学

来源: Central Ornithology Publication Office

【 摘 要 】

Abstract. Even though it is widely acknowledged that mate choice in female songbirds is likely to be based on multimodal cues such as those encoded in audiovisual song displays, procedural difficulties have limited studies of mate choice in songbirds mainly to acoustic signals. In the current study, we used audiovisual recordings of male Brown-headed Cowbirds (Molothrus ater) to test the sexual responses of females to males' song displays. Using the copulation-solicitation displays of estradiol-treated females (n = 9), we found that audiovisual playbacks of males performing wing-spread song displays were significantly more sexually stimulating for females than presentations of song accompanied by video of nondisplaying males, or song alone. Results from this study clearly showed that the visual stimulus of the wing-spread display in particular, not just the visual stimulus of a conspecific male in general, elicits the maximum observed response from females. In the Brown-headed Cowbird, females' sexual pre...

【 授权许可】

CC BY