Sexual Selection and the Barn Swallow (Oxford Series in Ecology & Evolution) - Hardcover

The main theme of this study is that sexual selection is important, and affects many aspects of animal life such as mating behaviour, parental care, host-parasite interactions and migration strategies. Birds with extravagant feather ornaments are the standard example of sexual selection. Here, the selective advantages of a long tail are investigated for a common bird, the barn swallow, in the context of sexual selection theory This study constitutes a major empirical text of the theoretical predictions and will be of especial interest to students on behavioural and evolutionary ecology. The first two chapters present a concise review of sexual selection theory and its two main components, male-male competition and female choice. Subsequent chapters investigate the advantage for males of being extravagantly adorned and the advantages that females acquire by being choosy when selecting a mate, using evidence from the author's long-term work on the monogamous barn swallow Moeller explores the roles of behaviour, ecology, morphology, genetics and evolution to provide a synthesis of this work to date. Anders Pape Moeller is co-author (with T.R. Birkhead) of "Sperm Competition in Birds