ArticleScience advances2020
Inconsistent sexual signaling degrades optimal mating decisions in animals.
Article in Science advances, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed.
- Timescales of call variability in a South American treefrog.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2026Article
- Article
- Complex choice environments shelter unattractive signallers from sexual selection.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Article
- Mate choice in a promiscuous poison frog.Ethology : formerly Zeitschrift fur Tierpsychologie · 2022Article
- Variations in advertisement call modulations do not influence vocal interactions in bullfrog choruses.JASA express letters · 2022Article
- The relationship between a combinatorial processing rule and a continuous mate preference function in an insect.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Like political stump speeches and product advertisements, animal signals are highly repetitive and function to persuade receivers to adopt behaviors benefiting the signaler. And like potential constituents and consumers, receivers assess signals to inform their behavioral decisions. However, inconsistency in sexual signals is widespread and potentially injects uncertainty into mating decisions. Here, we show that females fail to make optimal mating decisions based on assessments of signal quality due to inconsistency in signal production. Natural levels of inconsistency markedly reduced female preference expression for a nonarbitrary signal of male quality. Inconsistency reshaped preferences even more profoundly than the better-known impediment of ambient noise. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of how inconsistent messaging degrades optimal decision-making in animals, with implications for understanding signal evolution.
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