FEMALE CHOICE FOR HIGH ROARING RATES IN RED DEER, CERVUS-ELAPHUS

Red deer males roar loudly and repeatedly during the breeding season. A series of playback experiments, carried out on farmed red deer in New Zealand, revealed that females preferred a high to a low roaring rate, but not low-pitched to high-pitched roars. In free-ranging red deer, fundamental frequency (the main determinant of roar pitch) is not related to body weight or reproductive success, whereas roaring rate is positively associated with both reproductive success and fighting ability. Female choice for males with high roaring rates may either reflect a selection pressure on females to mate with males that are successful in contests with other males or show that females mate with males that are easy to locate. Females also preferred the roar bout that was delivered first in a sequence, suggesting that they may prefer stags that initiate bouts of roaring. This is the first study to demonstrate experimentally that vocal characteristics of male mammals can influence the female's choice of mating partner. © 1991 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.