FEMALES OF THE LEK-BREEDING GREAT SNIPE, GALLINAGO-MEDIA, PREFER MALES WITH WHITE TAILS

The great snipe is an almost monomorphic, lek-breeding bird. One of the characters that differs between the sexes is the amount of white on the tail feathers, males having more white than females. The amount of white also increases with age. In this paper the function of a white tail in intersexual and intrasexual selection is examined. Males with experimentally enlarged white areas on the tails did not enjoy an advantage in male-male competition between territorial birds. This may be because males test each other's fighting ability directly rather than by using morphological cues. On the other hand, females appeared to use the amount of white as a cue in mate choice. It is proposed that females use this cue primarily at short distances. © 1990 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.