The Evolution of Beauty by Richard O. Prum

Author:Richard O. Prum
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2017-05-08T16:00:00+00:00

Coordinated display of a pair of male Golden-winged Manakins. (Top) One male waits on the log in tail-pointing posture as another flies toward the log. As the flying male lands and rebounds off the log (dotted line), the waiting male leaps off the log (broken line). (Bottom) The two males cross in the air over the log and land facing one another in tail-pointing posture.

All of the displays I’ve just been describing are of the first functional type—the simply coordinated. The second special class of this behavior, the so-called obligate coordinated display, is unique to the blue Chiroxiphia manakins. Chiroxiphia males engage in the most extreme form of precopulatory male-male cooperation known in any animal. Pairs, or even larger groups, of males with long-standing relationships with each other perform coordinated displays that are a largely obligatory part of the courtship of females. Unlike other manakin females, Chiroxiphia females observe these coordinated performances and make their mating choices based on their evaluations of them. Once they decide which pair or group’s performance they prefer, they have the opportunity to select the dominant, alpha male of the group.

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