Our paper on “Trade-offs in male display activity with lek size” is now published on PlosOne:

Cestari, C., B. A. Loiselle, and M. A. Pizo. Trade-offs in male display activity with lek size. PloS ONE: 11(9): e0162943

Click here to see the publication.

The field research was led by Cesar Cestari and involved simultaneous filming at all male display territories on each of 10 leks of white-bearded manakins (Manacus manacus).  We asked if males of different ranks adjusted their display activities to reflect varying breeding opportunities as a function of lek size.  We found that overall display effort increased disproportionately with lek size due to males of both high and low ranks increasing their display effort at larger leks. Our results suggest that increased breeding opportunities and intrasexual competition at larger leks result in males of different ranks investing similarly in increased display effort in order to attract females.

The work was funded by a Brazilian government post-doctoral fellowship to Cesar Cestari and a CNPq Science without Borders Visiting Research Program grant (2013-2015) to Bette Loiselle as a collaborative grant with Marco Pizo and Cesar Cestari.