Bright colors, enlarged fins, feather plumes, song, horns, antlers, and tusks are often highly
sex dimorphic. Why have males in many animals evolved more conspicuous ornaments …

Currently favoured views for explaining ornaments in males emphasize female preference
such that females benefit from increased offspring production, good genes of the offspring …

In pied flycatchers females seem to prefer male territory quality rather than male
characteristics, and the results of female mate choice experiments are divergent. In this …

Abstract. In birds, it has proved difficult to demonstrate conclusively that females prefer
particular male traits. One problem is that females may sample few males before settling. To …

The pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca) is sexually dichromatic with extreme variation in
male plumage coloration. The benefit for males of having black plumage is controversial …

Understanding the origin and persistence of phenotypic variation within and among
populations is a major goal in evolutionary biology. However, the eagerness to find …

Sexual selection theory suggests that conspicuous plumage in male birds evolves through
contest competition between males and choice of bright males by females. A basic …

Bright coloration of males in many animal species has inspired researchers for more than a
century. In this field study, we investigated whether color variation between individuals is …

We present the first evidence for sexual deception by female mimicry in birds. Using live,
caged birds we show that territorial male pied flycatchers behave aggressively toward bright …

Sexual selection has been demonstrated to sometimes be strongly related to the expression
of secondary sexual characters, as shown by a number of classical textbook examples …