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 …

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 …

The voices of birds have always been a source of fascination. Nature's Music brings together
some of the world's experts on birdsong, to review the advances that have taken place in our …

One hypothesis for why females in many animal species frequently prefer to mate with the
most elaborately ornamented males predicts that availability of carotenoid pigments is a …

Carotenoids are a large group of more than 500 different biochemicals synthesized by
bacteria, fungi, algae and plants. Higher animals obtain these biologically active pigments in …

SEXUAL selection is one of the most actively studied areas of evolutionary biology1–3, and
ever since Darwin1 birds have been probably the most popular taxon for testing the …

In a wide range of bird species, females have been shown to express active preferences for
males that sing more complex songs. Current sexual selection theory predicts that for this …

▪ Abstract Bird song provides an unusually impressive illustration of vertebrate behavioral
diversification. Research on bird song evolution traditionally focuses on factors that enhance …

Hybridization of animal species is a special pattern of mating and hence a behavioral
phenomenon, influenced by ecological, demographic, and individual factors. We examine …

Analyzing the function of song and its evolution as a communication signal provides an
essential backdrop for understanding the physiological and neural mechanisms responsible …