Male mate choice, sexual conflict and strategic allocation of copulations in a lekking bird

The males of lekking species are not expected to be choosy about mating bec ause a reduced reproductive rate due to lost mating opportunities should ou tweigh any benefits of male choice. Females have traditionally not been exp ected to be competitive in this system since their reproduction has usually been assumed to be unconstrained by male availability. Here we show that, in contrast to these predictions, males are choosy and females may be compe titive in the lekking great snipe Gallinago media. Males preferred by many females often refused to copulate with and even chased away females that th e male had already copulated with, whereas females seemed to compete for re peated copulations. We conclude that choosiness may sometimes pay for popul ar males in those lekking species where females copulate repeatedly. Appare ntly, evolutionary conflicts of interest between individuals may cause a ri cher repertoire of behavioural adaptations than, to our knowledge, hitherto realized.