Courtship Disruptions and Male Mating Strategies: Examples from Female-Defense Mating Systems

Males frequently interrupt the copulation attempts of other males, and these courtship disruptions may limit the extent to which a few males are able to monopolize mating access to females. Males actively defend sexually receptive females in many species in which females form dense aggregations during the breeding season. Across and within such species there is considerable variation in the mating tactics adopted by males, with males in some cases defending groups of females and in other cases sequentially consorting with individual females. Colonial blackbirds have been central to studying this mating system, and we develop a conceptual model for how courtship disruption may account for variation in male mating tactics in this group. Our model assumes that the frequency of disruptions increases with greater colony size. As a consequence, successful copulations are less likely to occur at large colonies than at small colonies, and males are expected to switch from defending multiple females at the colony to consorting individual females away from it. Results from two species of blackbird support the basic assumptions of this model. In one species, the Montezuma oropendola, disruptions occur rarely and males defend groups of females, whereas in the other species, the yellow-rumped cacique, disruptions are frequent and males defend single females. Moreover, consistent with a key prediction, within each species, males associated with small colonies remain at the colony and defend groups of females, whereas males spend little time defending groups of females at large colonies and rarely attempt copulations there. This model has the potential to explain variation in male mating strategies and female monopolization for other taxa in which females form breeding aggregations.