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Extrapair Paternity Increases Variability In Male Reproductive Success In The Chestnut-Sided Warbler (Dendroica Pensylvanica), A Socially Monogamous Songbirds, Bruce Byers

Bruce Byers

A monogamous mating system that includes extrapair fertilization can potentially generate higher variability in male reproductive success than monogamy without extrapair fertilization. That increased variability could provide a correspondingly higher opportunity for sexual selection and, thus, for the origin and persistence of sexual dimorphism in monogamous species. To determine whether extrapair fertilization enhanced the opportunity for sexual selection in a sexually dimorphic, monogamous bird species, we used microsatellite DNA typing to assess the prevalence of extrapair fertilization and its effect on variation in male reproductive success in a population of Chestnut-sided Warblers (Dendroica pensylvanica). We found that the level of ...