Abstract
Males display diverse behaviours to try to obtain mates. Some male mating tactics, such as lekking, are spectacular because of the behaviours that they involve. Lekking males establish tiny, clustered territories without any resources attractive to females. They perform eye-catching displays, hardly feed, and compete intensely. Here, I describe the challenge that lekking poses to our understanding of the evolution of male mating behaviour. I outline the main hypotheses proposed to explain this behaviour and synthesize the evidence for these hypotheses from empirical tests in wild populations.
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Kavita Isvaran is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Ecological Sciences at IISc, Bangalore. She is a behavioural ecologist who focuses on animal behaviour and life histories, particularly social and reproductive traits. She is also interested in the consequences of evolved behavioural and life history traits for populations.
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Isvaran, K. The Lekking Puzzle. Reson 25, 353–362 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-020-0950-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12045-020-0950-x