Sexual response of female Great Tits to local and distant songs

We studied the response of wild-caught female Great Tits Parus major, implanted with estradiol, to playback of the songs of males of their own population and those of a population 8 km away. The females responded with a higher frequency of copulation solicitation displays to the local songs than to the distant songs. This supports earlier circumstantial evidence (McGregor and Krebs 1982a) that song structure is a factor in mate choice in the Great Tit.

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