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Multiple mating opportunities boost protandry in a pied flycatcher population

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Abstract

Protandry, the earlier arrival of males than females to breeding areas, is widespread in birds, but its underlying mechanisms are far from well understood. The two, not mutually exclusive most highly supported hypotheses to explain avian protandry postulate that it has evolved from intrasexual male competition to acquire the best territories (“rank advantage” hypothesis) and/or to maximize the number of mates (“mate opportunity” hypothesis). We studied for two consecutive years the relative importance of both hypotheses in a population of pied flycatchers (Ficedula hypoleuca), a territorial songbird with a mixed mating strategy. We measured territory quality using a long-term dataset on nest occupation and breeding output, and we used molecular techniques to assess male fitness across the range of social and genetic mating options. Territory quality was unrelated to breeding date and had no influence on extra-pair paternity or social polygynous events. However, males breeding early increased their chances of becoming socially polygynous and/or of attaining extra-pair paternity and, as a consequence, increased their total reproductive success. These results support the “mate opportunity” hypothesis, suggesting that sexual selection is the main mechanism driving protandry in this population.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Inés Valencia and Carlos Camacho for their dedicated assistance in the field and Airam Rodriguez for the valuable and long discussions on statistics and behavior. F. Stephen Dobson and an anonymous reviewer commented constructively on a first draft of the paper. Consejería de Medio Ambiente, Comunidad de Madrid and Delegación de Medio Ambiente, Junta de Castilla-La Mancha gave us working permissions. This work was supported by projects PAC05-006-2 (to J.A. Dávila) and CGL2006-07481/BOS. DC was supported by a grant from the Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia (I3P-BDP2005). RJ is supported by a Ramón y Cajal research contract (RYC-2009-03967) from the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación. JP was supported during writing by project CGL2009-10652 (to J.C. Senar).

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  1. Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Estación Biológica de Doñana-CSIC, Av. Américo Vespucio s/n, 41092, Sevilla, Spain

    David Canal, Roger Jovani & Jaime Potti

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  1. David Canal
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  2. Roger Jovani
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  3. Jaime Potti
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Correspondence to David Canal.

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Communicated by S. Pruett-Jones

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Canal, D., Jovani, R. & Potti, J. Multiple mating opportunities boost protandry in a pied flycatcher population. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 66, 67–76 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-011-1253-8

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