An increasing number of studies find females to base their mate choice on several cues.
Why this occurs is debated and many different hypotheses have been proposed. Here I …

Songs are complex acoustic signals produced mainly during the mating season. Such
signals are found in many taxa but are most typical of birds, frogs, and insects. Darwin (38) …

Gull chicks beg for food from their parents. Peacocks spread their tails to attract potential
mates. Meerkats alert family members of the approach of predators. But are these--and other …

A review of the literature reveals that, if females prefer traits that deviate from the population
mean, they usually prefer traits of greater quantity. In cases in which the sensory bases of …

Song learning is a cognitive task in which juvenile birds acquire, store and use information
about adult song to shape their own song production. Comparative studies show that across …

SUMMARY (i) To find out whether a mating preference could have initially evolved for
adaptive reasons, one must determine whether the preferred trait could have provided …

The nutritional stress hypothesis explains how learned features of song, such as complexity
and local dialect structure, can serve as indicators of male quality of interest to females in …

Sexual selection by female choice is a process involving communication. The male is the
sender and his courtship display is the signal, whereas the female is the receiver, with both …

In urban environments, anthropogenic noise may mask bird song, especially the notes
occurring at lower frequencies (1–2 kHz). Birds living in urban environments may modify …

In studies of bird song, experimental designs and statistical analyses are often inappropriate
for the hypotheses being tested. Frequently, only one playback or tutor stimulus is used to …