IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v26y2015i2p647-655..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Novel mate preference through mate-choice copying in zebra finches: sexes differ

Author

Listed:
  • Nina Kniel
  • Clarissa Dürler
  • Ines Hecht
  • Veronika Heinbach
  • Lilia Zimmermann
  • Klaudia Witte

Abstract

The development of preferences for males with sexual ornaments is still not well understood. Therefore, we investigated whether the use of public information in mate-choice copying can explain the development of mate preferences for a novel phenotype in male and female zebra finches (Taeniopygia guttata castanotis). In a binary choice situation, birds could choose between 2 conspecifics of the opposite sex of 2 different phenotypes: an unadorned phenotype and an adorned phenotype with a red feather on the forehead, simulating the novel phenotype. When no public information was provided, females and males spent a similar amount of time in front of individuals of both phenotypes. After observing a single, unadorned individual and a pair with 1 adorned partner for 2h, females and males could choose between other individuals of both phenotypes in 2 consecutive mate-choice tests. Females spent significantly more time in front of males of the adorned phenotype after the observation period than before the observation period. This shows that females copied and generalized the mate choice of other females for males of the new phenotype. In contrast to females, males did not copy the mate choice of other males. Results from controls provided no alternative explanation for the change in mate choice in females. Our study shows that sexes differ in using public information in mate-choice decisions and that mate-choice copying is a meaningful mechanism for the cultural inheritance of mate preferences in female zebra finches.

Suggested Citation

  • Nina Kniel & Clarissa Dürler & Ines Hecht & Veronika Heinbach & Lilia Zimmermann & Klaudia Witte, 2015. "Novel mate preference through mate-choice copying in zebra finches: sexes differ," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 26(2), pages 647-655.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:26:y:2015:i:2:p:647-655.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/aru241
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Klaudia Witte & Kirsten Ueding, 2003. "Sailfin molly females (Poecilia latipinna) copy the rejection of a male," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 14(3), pages 389-395, May.
    2. Frédérique Dubois & Dominique Drullion & Klaudia Witte, 2012. "Social information use may lead to maladaptive decisions: a game theoretic model," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 23(1), pages 225-231.
    3. Robert I. Bowers & Skyler S. Place & Peter M. Todd & Lars Penke & Jens B. Asendorpf, 2012. "Generalization in mate-choice copying in humans," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 23(1), pages 112-124.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Hugo Loning & Simon C Griffith & Marc Naguib, 2022. "Zebra finch song is a very short-range signal in the wild: evidence from an integrated approach [Song and aggressive signaling in Bachman’s Sparrow]," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 33(1), pages 37-46.
    2. Sabine Nöbel & Etienne Danchin & Guillaume Isabel, 2018. "Mate-copying for a costly variant in Drosophila melanogaster females," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 29(5), pages 1150-1156.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laurence E A Feyten & Adam L Crane & Indar W Ramnarine & Grant E Brown, 2021. "Predation risk shapes the use of conflicting personal risk and social safety information in guppies," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 32(6), pages 1296-1305.
    2. Sabine Nöbel & Etienne Danchin & Guillaume Isabel, 2018. "Mate-copying for a costly variant in Drosophila melanogaster females," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 29(5), pages 1150-1156.
    3. Bikhchandani, Sushil & Hirshleifer, David & Tamuz, Omer & Welch, Ivo, 2021. "Information Cascades and Social Learning," MPRA Paper 107927, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:26:y:2015:i:2:p:647-655.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.