S2E3 - Lekking for Love

Content Warning: explicit language, descriptions of sex, pretty wholesome episode honestly

Dancing, fighting, spreading sweet-smelling pheromones… all in the name of love. Lekking is a strange behavior that is a bit paradoxical in its hyper-competition but birds, frogs, bees, and even a few mammals all make it work. A male buffet where females have their pick of the best male, or perhaps a swanky second, and the males really don’t do much else but fight and dance.

Allan's Sources:

1. Kempenaers, Bart. (2022). Mating systems in birds. Current Biology. 32. R1115-R1121. 10.1016/j.cub.2022.06.066.


2. Kirkpatrick, M., Ryan, M. The evolution of mating preferences and the paradox of the lek. Nature 350, 33–38 (1991). https://doi.org/10.1038/350033a0


3. Rathore A, Isvaran K, Guttal V. 2023 Lekking as collective behaviour. Phil.Trans. R. Soc. B 378: 20220066. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2022.0066

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