How honest or reliable signaling can evolve and be maintained has been a major question in evolutionary biology. The question is especially puzzling for a particular class of signals used in aggressive interactions: threat signals. Here we report a study on song sparrows (
This revision fixes a typo in the Lande-Arnold phenotypic selection model: the non-linear coefficient for the soft song has a positive coefficient (it was reported as negative in the previous version). Thus the coefficient implies disruptive and not stabilizing selection. The main focus of the paper remains the negative correlational selection as before. The revision also has an updated Figure 1. The manuscript is provisionally accepted for publication at
the code is provided as text file, please copy and paste it into R
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
The following information was supplied relating to ethical approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
The procedures reported in the manuscript were conducted under the appropriate Washington State and U.S. Federal permits and University of Washington Animal Care and Use protocol # 2207-03.
The following information was supplied relating to field study approvals (i.e., approving body and any reference numbers):
US Fish and Wildlife Service Banding Permit #20220
The following information was supplied regarding data availability:
We will deposit the data as supplementary materials to the eventual peer-reviewed manuscript.