Female eavesdropping on male song contests in songbirds

Male song reflects the quality of the singer in many animals and plays a role in female choice of social and copulation partners. Eavesdropping on male-male vocal interactions is a means by which females can compare different males’ singing behavior directly and make immediate comparisons between potential partners on the basis of their relative vocal performance (1, 2). Using an interactive playback experiment followed by microsatellite paternity analysis, we investigated whether female black-capped chickadees (Poecile atricapilla) base their reproductive decisions on information gained through eavesdropping