Recent studies have indicated that mating success of large males may improve under increasing levels of mating competition. This outcome is explained 1) if male mating competition is overriding female preferences for male traits that are unrelated to, or negatively correlated with, male size and...

Female mating preferences are often based on more than one cue. In empirical studies, however, different mate choice cues are typically treated separately ignoring their possible interactions. In the current work, we studied how male body size and size of the male's nest jointly affect mate...

Over a broad range of animal systems, male reproductive success depends on resource holding potential (RHP) and resource quality. In a field study, we randomly combined males of different sizes with nests of different sizes to investigate the relative role of resource holding potential and...

Traditionally, male parental effort and mate attraction effort are expected to be in conflict as they compete for the same resource budget. However, the quality of care provided by the male may be of a direct benefit to females and may provide an important mate choice cue. In a laboratory...