MATE CHOICE IN THE WILLOW WARBLER - A FIELD EXPERIMENT

Females may choose a mate on his own quality or on the quality of his resources, i.e., his territory. We removed willow warbler males and allowed new males to settle, before the arrival of females, in order to test whether the proximate cue for female choice was any male trait or territory characteristics. The experiment indicates that females base their choice on some male trait. No correlation was found between male settlement order and size (tarsus length, wing length), but males arriving early were in better body condition than males arriving late. The most likely male trait for female choice was singing rate, which was a good indicator of male settlement date. The duration of time between mating and egg laying was shorter in early territories, both in the observational and the experimental data. Since male song rate was correlated with territory quality (e.g., food abundance) the ultimate benefit to females choosing males with high song rates could be a high quality territory.