Song post exposure, song features, and predation risk

Male birds use song to attract mates and deter other males,but in doing so, they also attract the attention of predatorsand parasites. Such viability costs are inherent in reliablesignals, potentially causing females to prefer mates that displayfrom the most exposed sites. However, viability costs of sexualsignals may be ameliorated by affecting the choice of microhabitat,which in turn may affect the design of song features that aremost efficiently transmitted in this microhabitat. We estimatedthe exposure of song posts (microsites used by males when singing)used by passerine birds in relation to prey selection by thesparrowhawk Accipiter nisus, by calculating the proportion ofmales that sang from song posts that were at the maximum levelof the vegetation, in an attempt to quantify the costs of sexualselection. We quantified prey susceptibility to predation asthe difference between the log-transformed observed number ofprey minus the log-transformed expected number of prey in theenvironment. This prey susceptibility index increased with increasingsong post exposure similarly in sexually dichromatic and monochromaticspecies, although the prey susceptibility index was relatedto sexual dichromatism. Song post exposure was dependent onhabitat, but comparative models controlling for the potentiallyconfounding effects of habitat, sexual dichromatism, hole nesting,coloniality, body mass, cognitive capacities, and flying abilitiesindicated that the relationship between the prey susceptibilityindex and song post exposure is strong. Path analyses of therelationship between song post exposure, sexual dichromatism,and prey susceptibility index revealed that selection actingon sexual dichromatism and song post exposure has secondaryimpact on prey susceptibility index. The opposite causal mechanismsby which predation affects sexual traits are less likely. Thesemodels suggest that female preference for high song posts ordichromatic plumage increases predation risk on an evolutionarytime scale.