Male mate preference against tail‐elongated females in the barn swallow

Abstract

Animals often exhibit ornamentation, such as colorful bird plumage and long tail feathers, which seem to have negative effects on survivorship (Andersson, 1994). A classic explanation of such ornamentation is that more ornamented individuals are preferred by potential mates and hence (inter)sexually selected (e.g., seeHill, 2006 for a review on bird plumage). Although this explanation is often applied to male ornamentation, females can also possess ornamentation. Recent phylogenetic and experimental studies show that the intersexual genetic correlation with male ornamentation ('correlated response hypothesis') alone cannot explain female ornamentation, because the evolution and maintenance of female ornamentation are related to the intensity of female-female competition for reproduction, largely independent of male ornamentation (e.g.,