Fitness benefits to intrasexual aggression in female house wrens
Description
In this study we addressed four questions about female intrasexual aggression in house wrens (Troglodytes aedon): (1) Does intrasexual aggression help females during periods of elevated competition over breeding resources?, (2) Do aggressive females have higher quality mates?, (3) Do aggressive females invest less in reproduction?, and (4) Does female aggression affect offspring growth and survival? We found that aggressive females protected more eggs from ovicide during experimentally enhanced competition. Aggressive females did not invest less in egg production. Aggressive females had mates that fed offspring more often and they fed offspring more frequently themselves. Offspring of more aggressive females were heavier at multiple points in development and more likely to survive to fledging. Experimental details can be found in Krieg, CA, Getty, T. 2020. Fitness benefits to intrasexual aggression in female house wrens, Troglodytes aedon. Animal Behaviour 160:79-90. doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.12.001. data.set.legend: descriptions for all variables in all data sets pca.all.data: Behaviors during simulated intrusions that contributed to the principal component analysis for male and female house wrens. takeover.data: Principal component 1 scores during previous simulated female intrusions for females involved in territory takeovers. PC1 scores during the heterospecific trial are included for comparison. fitness.ben.data: All other data used to conduct the analyses in this manuscript. Includes data on responses during simulated territorial intrusions and various measures of reproductive success.