Development of sexual signals in bowerbirds (Ref: 4235)

雄性园丁鸟以其复杂的求偶展示而闻名，包括用彩色物体装饰的凉亭，发声和有力的展示动作。雄性大园丁鸟（Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis）也用它们的园丁鸟来创造视觉技巧，影响观看的雌性对他展示的装饰品的感知。尽管各种各样的信号，男性求爱时产生的女性，很少有人知道男性如何构建他的凉亭，他的身体显示运动如何与凉亭显示互动，以及男性是否调整凉亭外观或求爱显示响应社会和环境的变化。本项目将量化男性展示女性的角度来解决新的问题，建设行为，多组件求爱显示，感知和女性choice.Project的目的和MethodsThis项目将增加我们的理解基于运动的求爱显示和他们的互动与扩展的表型，通过解决以下问题：1。男性如何建造凉亭？雄性每年都会建造一个新的凉亭，凉亭的大小和组成似乎因个体而异。通过量化雄性如何构建和装饰他们的凉亭，我们将调查建筑行为的变化，并更广泛地探索与筑巢行为的相似之处。我们还将使用来自凉亭测量和男性展示的数据来确定不同展示组件的质量是否存在权衡或积极关联。求爱的表现是技巧的指标吗？当展示给女性，男性拿起，摇晃和抛出各种颜色的物体，穿插介绍他们的粉红色的冠。通过视频男性的显示从女性的角度来看，从凉亭内，并使用无标记的对象跟踪软件，我们将量化的男性和他显示的对象的运动是如何被女性，男性如何在他们的显示不同，以及女性是否更喜欢男性，产生更熟练或有力的显示。3.雄性会随着时间的推移而改善它们的表现吗？未成熟的雄性花了长达七年的时间来学习如何建立凉亭，随着时间的推移，显示质量的变化在这个物种中知之甚少。通过量化多年来可识别的男性的建筑行为和求偶展示的变化，我们将深入了解求偶行为的发展，并量化社会和环境因素对展示质量的影响。

Male bowerbirds are famous for their complex courtship displays that incorporate a bower decorated with coloured objects, vocalisations, and vigorous display movements. Male great bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchus nuchalis) also use their bowers to create visual tricks that affect the viewing female's perception of the decorations that he presents during display. Despite the variety of signals that males produce when courting females, little is known about how the male constructs his bower, how his physical display movements interact with the bower display, and whether males adjust bower appearance or courtship displays in response to social and environmental changes. This project will quantify the female perspective of male displays to address novel questions about construction behaviour, multi-component courtship displays, perception, and female choice.Project Aims and MethodsThis project will increase our understanding of movement-based courtship displays and their interaction with an extended phenotype by addressing the following questions:1. How do males build bowers? Males build a new bower every year, and bower size and composition appear to vary across individuals. By quantifying how males construct and decorate their bowers, we will investigate variation in building behaviour and explore parallels with nest building behaviour more broadly. We will also use data from bower measurements and male displays to determine whether there are trade-offs or positive associations in the quality of different display components.2. Are courtship displays indicators of skill? When displaying to females, males pick up, shake and toss a variety of coloured objects, interspersed with presentations of their pink crest. By videoing the male's display from the female's point of view from within the bower and using markerless object tracking software, we will quantify how the motion of both the male and the objects he displays are perceived by the female, how males vary in their displays, and whether females prefer males that produce more skilful or vigorous displays. 3. Do males improve their displays over time? Immature males spend up to seven years learning how to build bowers, and changes in display quality over time are poorly understood in this species. By quantifying the changes in building behaviour and courtship displays of individually identifiable males over multiple years, we will gain insights into the development of courtship behaviour, and will quantify the effects that social and environmental factors have on display quality.