Female behaviour affects male courtship in whitethroats, Sylvia communis:: an interactive experiment using visual and acoustic cues

Unmated male whitethroats court females with a special display in which the male dives towards the female while singing a quiet and complex song, the diving song. Observations of natural interactions suggest that females can affect males' courtship behaviour by making dscharp-calls or ze-calls and by making short jumps towards the diving males. We tested this in an interactive experiment where jumps and calls were presented in different combinations to unmated territorial males. Jumps were presented by means of a stuffed female mounted on a remotely controlled device, and calls were played back from a speaker placed beneath the stuffed female. Female calls and jumps had a strong but differential effect on male courtship, Playback of dscharp-calls attracted the attention of males and hence caused them to perform courtship sooner and jumps increased the number of diving songs, whereas ze-calls resulted in more males attempting copulation with the stuffed female. (C) 2002 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.