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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access originally published online on November 7, 2008
Behavioral Ecology 2009 20(1):222-228; doi:10.1093/beheco/arn139
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© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Do male paternity guards ensure female fidelity in a duetting fairy-wren?

Michelle L. Halla,b and Anne Petersb

a School of Botany and Zoology, Australian National University, Canberra, 0200, Australia b Behavioural Ecology of Sexual Signals Group, Max Planck Institute for Ornithology, Vogelwarte Radolfzell, D-78315, Germany

Address correspondence to Michelle L. Hall. Mornington Wildlife Sanctuary, PMB 925, Derby, WA 6728, USA. E-mail: hall{at}orn.mpg.de.


  Abstract

Most socially monogamous bird species engage in extra-pair mating, and consequently males may adopt various behavioral strategies to guard paternity. However, the relationship between mate guarding and extra-pair paternity is unclear: low levels of extra-pair paternity can be associated either with no mate guarding or with intense mate guarding. We investigate paternity guards in the purple-crowned fairy-wren (Malurus coronatus), a duetting species where extra-pair paternity is rare. This species is unusual in a genus known for extremely high levels of extra-pair mating. We examine the behavioral interactions between the sexes underlying these low rates of extra-pair paternity and show that male purple-crowned fairy-wrens do not use frequent copulation or courtship feeding to assure paternity or guard females acoustically by duetting. Males maintain close proximity to females both when they are fertile and when they are not breeding and do not invest in courtship displays to extra-pair females. Consistent with predictions of theoretical models, low extra-pair paternity in this species may be related to female fidelity rather than male paternity assurance strategies, but short-term removal of males would be necessary to test this experimentally.

Key words: copulation duration, courtship feeding, duetting, extra-pair paternity, mate guarding, sexual conflict.

Received 28 May 2008; revised 30 September 2008; accepted 3 October 2008.


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