ArticleBMC evolutionary biology2019
Evolution of female promiscuity in Passerides songbirds.
Article in BMC evolutionary biology, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers.
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21 citing papers in PubMed, 86 citations in OpenAlex.
- The costs of extra-pair behaviours in birds.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2026Review
- Unusual Sperm Morphology in Two Sedentary Songbird Species.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Variation in Eusperm Length May Reflect Reproductive Barriers and Differences in Sperm Competition Intensity AmongEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- No Evidence for Male Retaliation in a Population With High Level of Extra-Pair Paternity.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Intra- and intergenerational costs of handicapping in the Saffron Finch (Sicalis flaveola), a thraupid with delayed plumage maturation.PloS one · 2025Article
- Climate and ecology predict latitudinal trends in sexual selection inferred from avian mating systems.PLoS biology · 2024Article
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- Plumage and eggshell colouration covary with the level of sex-specific parental contributions to nest building in birds.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2024Article
- Sex differences in avian parental care patterns vary across the breeding cycle.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Female extra-pair copulation for direct fitness benefits: A cautionary note.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Experimental extra-pair copulations provide proof of concept for fertility insurance in a socially monogamous bird.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- When Older Males Sire More Offspring-Increased Attractiveness or Higher Fertility?Behavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2022Article
- Sperm length divergence as a potential prezygotic barrier in a passerine hybrid zone.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Article
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- Temporal dynamics of competitive fertilization in social groups of red junglefowl (Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Sperm Morphology and Male Age in Black-Throated Blue Warblers, an Ecological Model System.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Article
- Heritability of the extra-pair mating behaviour of the pied flycatcher in Western Siberia.PeerJ · 2020Article
- Endless forms of sexual selection.PeerJ · 2019Article
- The evolution of extra-pair paternity and paternal care in birds.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 6 institutions in 5 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundFemale promiscuity is highly variable among birds, and particularly among songbirds. Comparative work has identified several patterns of covariation with social, sexual, ecological and life history traits. However, it is unclear whether these patterns reflect causes or consequences of female promiscuity, or if they are byproducts of some unknown evolutionary drivers. Moreover, factors that explain promiscuity at the deep nodes in the phylogenetic tree may be different from those important at the tips, i.e. among closely related species. Here we examine the relationships between female promiscuity and a broad set of predictor variables in a comprehensive data set (N = 202 species) of Passerides songbirds, which is a highly diversified infraorder of the Passeriformes exhibiting significant variation in female promiscuity.
resultsFemale promiscuity was highly variable in all major clades of the Passerides phylogeny and also among closely related species. We found several significant associations with female promiscuity, albeit with fairly small effect sizes (all R
conclusionsWe found that multiple traits were associated with female promiscuity, but these associations were generally weak. Some traits, such as reduced parental care in males and more cryptic plumage in females, might even be responses to, rather than causes of, variation in female promiscuity. Hence, the high variation in female promiscuity among Passerides species remains enigmatic. Female promiscuity seems to be a rapidly evolving trait that often diverges between species with similar ecologies and breeding systems. A future challenge is therefore to understand what drives within-lineage variation in female promiscuity over microevolutionary time scales.
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