And/or about male songbirds showing preferences for song performance or complexity when they choose a mate?
The only papers I have found are about male quality and female mate choice while males can be as choosy as females, in particular in socially monogamous species.
In some species, males and females sing together ('duetting'). Perhaps it reflects pair quality (e.g. experience)....
Dear Aurélie,
In African black coucals, larger females vocalise at lower pitch in an aggressive context (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-009-0836-0#page-1), and the pitch of their vocalisations seems to be perceived as indicator of female quality (http://beheco.oxfordjournals.org/content/21/6/1147.abstract). This is a bird species with reversed sex roles, a non-songbird species though.
Best,
Nicole
Dear Aurélie,
Another example but again, not in a songbird species: budgerigars pair according to their pre-pairing call similarity (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1439-0310.2006.01267.x/abstract).
Best
-Nicolas-
We recently published a paper on mutual mate-choice. Specifically, we found that males may modulate their song properties based on individual female and time spent with that female.
Brunton, D. H., Roper, M. M., & Harmer, A. M. (2016). Female song rate and structure predict reproductive success in a socially monogamous bird. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 4, 13.
Cain, K. E., Cockburn, A., & Langmore, N. E. (2015). Female song rates in response to simulated intruder are positively related to reproductive success. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 3, 119.
Langmore, N. E., Davies, N. B., Hatchwell, B. J., & Hartley, I. R. (1996). Female song attracts males in the alpine accentor Prunella collaris. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 263(1367), 141–146.
Cain, K. E., & Langmore, N. E. (2016). Female song and aggression show contrasting relationships to reproductive success when habitat quality differs. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 70(11), 1867–1877.
Keen, S., Meliza, C. D., Pilowsky, J., & Rubenstein, D. R. (2016). Song in a social and sexual context: Vocalizations signal identity and rank in both sexes of a cooperative breeder. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 4, 46.
