Figure 1.
Individual consistency in female copulatory behaviour.
(a) Mean number ±SE of extra-pair copulations performed by 63 females in experiment 3, depending on whether females had copulated or not when encountering males for the first time in life (experiment 1). (b) Mean sexual responsiveness ±SE of 63 females shown towards the males they preferred the most and the least, respectively, during choice-chamber tests. Females were more responsive towards preferred males (most vs. least preferred out of four males in a choice chamber), but only during extra-pair mating trials (experiment 3), not when females met them for the first time (experiment 1; first encounters). Responsiveness is measured on a scale from -1 (strong rejection) to +1 (strong inclination to copulate).
Table 1.
Assignment of social partners and extra-pair males to females for copulation trials.
Figure 2.
Outcome of 554 extra-pair mating trials in relation to female preferences.
The x-axis shows the relative times that females had spent with the extra-pair male vs. their partner during choice-chamber tests conducted before pair formation and is calculated as x = time spent with extra-pair male/(time spent with extra-pair male+time spent with partner). The numbers of trials with and without extra-pair copulations (EPC) are indicated.
Figure 3.
Average female responsiveness during extra-pair mating trials towards 86 males.
Explanatory variables are (a) average male attractiveness (averaged across eight females) in the choice chamber, and (b) average male song rate during extra-pair trials. Each data point represents a male. Female responsiveness is measured on a scale from −1 (strong rejection) to +1 (strong inclination to copulate). Attractiveness is measured as the proportion of active time that females spent next to one of the four males in a choice chamber (expected value = 0.25). Song rate is the square-root transformed number of seconds of directed song that males produced during 5-min trials. Lines are fitted regression lines, irrespective of significance.