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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access first published online on July 21, 2004
This version published online on September 27, 2004
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arh135
© 2004 by International Society for Behavioral Ecology
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Received March 30, 2004
Accepted May 26, 2004

Article

Elaborate ornaments are costly to maintain: evidence for high maintenance handicaps

Bruno A. Walther 1* and Dale H. Clayton 2

1 Department of Zoology, Oxford University, Oxford OX1 3PS, UK; Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, DK 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark
2 Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 South 1400 East, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: reprints{at}bruno-walther.de.


  Abstract

Elaborate secondary sexual traits, such as the ornamental plumage of birds, may be favored by female choice because they serve as honest indicators of male quality. Elaborate traits are thought to be honest signals because they are expensive to produce and increase predation risk. Here we investigate another potential cost of elaborate traits, i.e., the time and energy required to maintain them in good condition. We tested the hypothesis that species of birds with ornamental plumage invest more time in maintenance behavior than do related species without such plumage. To test the hypothesis we quantified the maintenance behavior of nine ornamental and nine non-ornamental species in aviaries and zoos. To test the validity of using captive birds, we first collected data on 12 captive species for which data from wild individuals were also available. The maintenance times of captive and wild individuals were highly correlated across species. Maintenance time was also correlated with plumage length, independent of body size. Ornamental species had longer plumage than non-ornamental species, and they devoted significantly more time to maintenance. Time spent on maintenance cannot be devoted to other activities. This temporal trade-off reinforces the honesty of ornamental plumage. We suggest that high maintenance handicaps are present in a variety of animals.

Keywords: comparative study; grooming; indicator mechanisms; sexual selection; time budgets.
Please note that citations for Carbonell M, 1983, and Hepp GR, 1982, have been inserted in the reference section.
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