Annotative Bibliography:
Badyaev,
Alexander V. & Qvarnstrom, Anna. (2002). Putting sexual traits into
the context of an organism: A life history perspective in studies of
sexual selection. The Auk,119, 301-310.
Moller, Andres Pape. (1991). Sexual selection in the monogamous barn swallow (Hirundo rustica ) Determinants of tail ornament size. Evolution,45, 1823-1836 .
This paper discusses how female barn swallows use the length of the males tale to determine their mate. The article shows that their are two distinctions between tail size in males. Those males with long tails are assumed to have good genes and will thus produce offspring with those same genes, allowing for a better survival rate. The second distinction is that males with short tails, while not having the best genes, will help with parental duties.
Smith, Henrik G. & Montgomerie, Robert. (1992). Male incubation in barn swallows: The influencs of nest temperature and sexual selection. The Condor,94, 750-759.
Soler, Juan Jose & Cuervot, Jose Javier. (1998). Nest building is a sexually selected behavior in the barn swallow. Animal Behavior, 56, 1435-1442.
The premises of this article is whether female
barn swallows select mates according to their parental efforts. Parental
efforts has been shown to coincide with nest building behavior. Thus, males
who invest more time in building a nest are more likely to invest more time
in parenting. Soler also saw a negative correlation among tail length and
investment time. Males with long tails, and good genes, are likely to invest
less time then males with short tails. The benefits of a male who builds
a better nest is that he releaves some of the burden off of the mother
in raising the young. However, it was seen that females will usually mate
with long tail males as too improve their fitness.