Sexual Selection and the Barn Swallow

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