Latest Courtship display Stories
John Neumann for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A team of biologists from Tufts University in Boston may have answered the question of what attracts fireflies to each other. Dr. Adam South, with supervision from colleague Sara Lewis, who have been studying fireflies for 20 years, used LED lights to mimic the flashes of amorous male fireflies. In the wild, females are very picky about what males they reveal themselves to during this part of the courtship routine. Females will only...
In most species, females prefer the most intense courtship display males can muster, but a new study finds that female cowbirds actually prefer less intense displays. The full results are published May 2 in the open access journal PLoS ONE. The researchers, led by Adrian O'Loghlen of University of California Santa Barbara, write that males direct more intense wing-spreading displays toward other males as aggressive communicative signals. It appears, however, that while these signals may...
Male peacock tail plumage and courtship antics likely influence their success at attracting and mating with females, according to recent Queen's University research.Roz Dakin and Robert Montgomerie have found that natural variation in the number of eyespots on a peacock's tail does not impact a male's mating success. However, peacocks whose tails are clipped to considerably reduce the number of eyespots are less successful at mating.Female rejection of males with substantially fewer eyespots...
Female budgerigars found to judge 'virtual males' by their contact callsParrots are famed for their ability to mimic sounds and now researchers have used 'virtual mates' to discover if female parrots judge male contact calls when deciding on a mate. The research, published in Ethology, challenges traditional understandings of the difference between birds 'songs' and 'calls'.Parrots are among the few species of bird to have developed the ability to quickly learn and mimic new sounds, but the...
Courtship calls tell penguin females how fat a male is and what kind of father he'll beHow does a female penguin choose a mate? Courtship calls help females decide which males are likely to be devoted dads, says a study in the journal Behaviour.Antarctic penguins come on land for just a few short months each summer to breed and raise their chicks. Raising a family in the coldest place on earth is no small feat. Adelie penguins pull it off by tag-team parenting, the researchers explained....
Females can be too attractive to the opposite sex "“"“ too attractive for their own good "“"“ say biologists at UC Santa Barbara. They found that, among fruit flies, too much male attention directed toward attractive females leads to smaller families and, ultimately, to a reduced rate of population-wide adaptive evolution.In an article published in the December 8 issue of Public Library of Science Biology, the authors described their experiments on the sex lives of fruit...
According to biologists, birds that fare best in courtship strut faster and more pay attention to their potential mate by adjusting to her movements."It's not just having a big tail but knowing how to use it appropriately during courtship," said Gail Patricelli of the University of California. Patricelli specializes in the study of sage-grouse courting rituals. "I've found males that are more receptive to subtle cues given by the female are more successful," she told...
Scientists have developed a mathematical model of the mating game to help explain why courtship is often protracted. The study, by researchers at UCL (University College London), University of Warwick and LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science), shows that extended courtship enables a male to signal his suitability to a female and enables the female to screen out the male if he is unsuitable as a mate.The research, published this month in the Journal of Theoretical Biology,...
