© 1993 International Society for Behavioral Ecology
research-article |
The influence of nest predation on mating strategies under polygyny
Department of Zoology Stockholm University, S-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden
ABSTRACT
The mating status of an advertising male is one important factor for female assessment. In species where already-mated males try to attract additional females at some distance from their mate, mating status may be difficult to assess. Limitations in the time available to breed and a decrease in reproductive success over the breeding season could make the costs outweigh the benefits of a time-consuming mate assessment process, which automatically postpones the onset of breeding. Time and energy constraints will then limit the behavioral options for females in search of breeding opportunities, and females would suffer a cost when assessing male mating status. Female choice may then be better understood by analyzing the behavioral options for females; the success of a strategy in which costly assessments are avoided and females choose mates indiscriminately, disregarding mating status ("fast" strategy), could be compared to the success of a strategy in which females carefully try to assess mating status ("coy" strategy). Nest predation should be included in such an analysis because it influences the amount of male assistance females of polygynous males receive, as nest predation for only one of a polygynous male's two females leads to more male assistance for the other female. In this study, I compare the outcome of a "fast" strategy with that of a "coy" strategy under different rates of nest predation. Although high probabilities of becoming a mate of a polygynous male associated with a fitness reduction decrease the relative success of a "fast" strategy, simulations show that high rates of nest predation considerably lower the difference in the outcome of the two strategies. Therefore, the cost of assessing mating status must be relatively small to be economical.
Key words: fitness, mate assesment, mating strategies, nest predation, polygyny[Behav Ecol 4:340–344 (1993)].