The study investigated how Aphrodes makarovi males increase their mating success. In rivalry situations, males often emit masking signals to overlap the female reply. When in playback experiments males received female replies overlapped with masking signals, they lowered their calling effort and were less effective in locating the female. Males were capable of eavesdropping to male–female duet maintained by the rival and of using that to locate the female before rival. Aggressive physical interactions were observed in 50% of trials. Our results suggest that males that have greater reproductive success in presence of a rival, may invest more in competitive behaviour than in calling.
B.03 Paper at an international scientific conference
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