Mate-Guarding in the Great Tit: Tactics of a Territorial Forest-Living Species

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Abstract
In the Great Tit Parus major distance between pair members decreased significantly during the fertile period of the female; at the same time a more clumped pattern of home range use was observed. Males also followed their females more often when females initiated site-changes, while males reduced their own rate of site-change initiation. All these facts are consistent with the mate-guarding hypothesis. Males did not visit other territories more frequently during the territory owners'' fertile period and they were not engaged in as many aggressive encounters as predicted. Courtship feeding as the reason for the close male-female proximity was rejected because males rarely fed their females. Neither did the data support a predator detection, nor a nest-guarding hypothesis. Compared with other bird species studied, mate-guarding is less intense in the Great Tit. This is probably due to its forest-living habit, its territorial system and relatively low breeding density reducing the opportunities for males to seek extra-pair copulations. The relatively high nesting synchrony may also reduce the need for mate-guarding.