Maximizing sexual signal transmission: use of multiple display sites by male houbara bustards
| Autor: | Juan C. Alonso, Inmaculada Abril-Colón, Carlos Palacín, Alberto Ucero, José M. Álvarez-Martínez |
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| Přispěvatelé: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (España), Red Eléctrica de España, Agencia Estatal de Investigación (España), Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España) |
| Rok vydání: | 2022 |
| Předmět: | |
| Zdroj: | Digital.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC instname |
| Popis: | A good location of song or call posts and visual display sites of males is crucial for territory defence and mate attraction. These sites are typically located at prominent positions to ensure an efcient, long-distance sexual advertisement. If the purpose of display sites is to maximize visibility, a suitable strategy would be to use multiple display sites rather than just one site. We investigated this in the ground-displaying houbara bustard by using two recent technological advances that enabled us collecting high precision data, GSM/GPRS loggers provided with accelerometer and very high-resolution digital elevation models of the terrain. We found that 12 out of 20 marked males used two or three display sites instead of just one as previously assumed in this species. The most used display site had the largest viewshed and use of both alternative sites decreased in proportion to their decreasing viewsheds. The number of display sites was apparently determined by two factors. First, it was correlated with display intensity, suggesting that using multiple display sites may be a mechanism to increase sexual signal transmission in males that are dominant or in better condition. Second, supplementary display sites were not used when the principal display site already provided an excellent view of the surroundings, e.g. when it was located on a hilltop. These results confrmed that the function of secondary display sites is to supplement the viewshed provided by the principal display site, and so maximize sexual signal transmission. Open Access funding provided thanks to the CRUE-CSIC agreement with Springer Nature. The research leading to these results has received funding from a contract between Red Eléctrica de España (REE) and the Agencia Estatal Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científcas (CSIC) (contract number 20164379 awarded to JCA). AU was supported by a FPU predoctoral contract from the Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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