Sexual Selection And Species Recognition Promote Complex Male Courtship Displays In Ungulates

D’Ammando, Giacomo and Bro-Jørgensen, Jakob (2024) Sexual Selection And Species Recognition Promote Complex Male Courtship Displays In Ungulates. Behavioral Ecology. arae027-.

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Abstract

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Identifying the evolutionary drivers of sexual signal complexity is a key challenge in the study of animal communication. Among mammals, male bovids and cervids often perform elaborate gestural displays during courtship, consisting of ritualized movements of various parts of the body but the causes underlying interspecific variation in complexity of such displays remain poorly understood. Here we apply the comparative method to investigate which factors may have either promoted or constrained gestural repertoire size.</jats:p> <jats:p>We found that sexual selection was a strong predictor of gestural display complexity in male bovids and cervids. Repertoire size was positively correlated with breeding group size, an indicator of the intensity of sexual selection on males. Moreover, repertoires were larger in species adopting non-territorial and lek breeding mating systems than in species adopting resource-defence territoriality, a finding that can be explained by more emphasis on direct benefits than indirect benefits in resource-defence systems, where male mating success may also be less skewed due to difficulty in monopolising mates.</jats:p> <jats:p>The results also indicate that gestural repertoire size was positively correlated with the number of closely-related species occurring in sympatry. This is consistent with display complexity being selected to facilitate species recognition during courtship and thereby avoid interspecific hybridization. At the same time, repertoire size was negatively associated with male body mass, possibly due to the energetic and mechanical constraints imposed on movements in very large species. By contrast, we found no evidence that the habitat drives selection for complex gestural courtship displays.</jats:p>

Item Type:	Article
Divisions:	Faculty of Health and Life Sciences Faculty of Health and Life Sciences > Institute of Infection, Veterinary and Ecological Sciences
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	17 Apr 2024 09:27
Last Modified:	17 Apr 2024 09:27
DOI:	10.1093/beheco/arae027
Related URLs:	Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3180394