Consistent individual differences in decoration colour choice behaviour by male Spotted Bowerbirds <i>Chlamydera maculata</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Sexual displays differ between individuals, forming the basis for mate choice. In some species, (typically) males create their own displays by combining elements. Examples include series of sounds combined into songs; sets of movements into dances; or objects gathered to form extended phenotypes. In these cases, learning and choice behaviour can shape the display, and therefore variation in male choices about incorporation can affect sexual success and be subject to selection. We examined individual variation in object colour choice among male Spotted Bowerbirds (Chlamydera maculata) for bower decorations. Using controlled experiments with coloured paperclips – objects rarely found as decorations and novel at the study site – we tested for preferences while controlling for opportunity, experience and availability. Males showed shared population-level preferences and rejections that shifted over the breeding season. However, they also displayed consistent individual differences in how they selected or rejected each of the seven colours, both within and across two seasons. Auxiliary males, likely younger individuals attending bowers before acquiring their own, showed broadly similar colour preferences to owner males. However, their choices did not closely align with the specific owners they attended. This suggests that individual preferences are not entirely shaped by shared experiences at a particular bower but may develop before males establish their own. Our findings indicate that colour choice patterns are not uniform across the population. These individual differences likely contribute to variation in bower decoration styles, which could influence mating success.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".