Sexual experience can affect use of public information in mate choice

The mate choices of sexually experienced, female Japanese quail, Coturnix japonica, are influenced by information acquired by observation of potential partners engaging in social interactions. Female quail show an increased preference both for males that they have seen mate with another female and for the less aggressive of a pair of males that they have watched interact aggressively. We examined effects of females' prior sexual experience on their use of such public information when choosing a partner. We found that virgin female quail, like female quail with sexual experience, increased their preference for a male after seeing him mate with another female. Whereas sexually experienced females preferred the less aggressive member of a pair of males that they had seen engage in an agonistic encounter, virgin female quail preferred the more aggressive member of such a pair. We interpret the results as indicating that sexual experience plays little role in the development of mate-choice copying by female quail, whereas experience of punishing aspects of interactions with conspecific males reverses naïve female quails' positive response to relatively aggressive members of the opposite sex.