PATERNAL GENETIC CONTRIBUTION TO OFFSPRING CONDITION PREDICTED BY SIZE OF MALE SECONDARY SEXUAL CHARACTER

Whether females can obtain genetic benefits from mate choice is conten tious, and the main problem faced by previous studies of natural popul ations is that many factors other than paternal genes contribute to of fspring fitness. Here, we use comparisons between sets of naturally oc curring maternal half-sibling collared flycatchers, Ficedula albicolli s, to control for this problem. We show, first, that there are paterna l genetic effects on nestling fledging condition, a character related to fitness in this species. Further, the magnitude of the paternal gen etic contribution to this character is related to the size of a condit ion-dependent male secondary sexual character. Our results demonstrate that genetic benefits from mate choice can be predicted by the size o f a secondary sexual character, and therefore provide direct support f or indicator models of sexual selection.