Male vocalizations convey information on kinship and inbreeding in a Lekking bird

Kinship and inbreeding are two major components involved in sexual selection and mating system evolution. However, the mechanisms underlying recognition and discrimination of genetically related or inbred individuals remain unclear. We investigated whether kinship and inbreeding information is related to low frequency vocalizations, “booms”, produced by males during their courtship in the lekking houbara bustard (Chlamydotis undulata undulata). Based on a captive breeding programme where the pedigree of all males is known, we investigated the similarity of booms’ acoustic parameters among captive males more or less individually inbred and therefore genetically related with each other. In the wild, we investigated the relationship between the spatial distribution of males within leks and the similarity of acoustic parameters of their booms. In the captive population, we found (1) a relationship between the individual inbreeding level of captive males and their vocalization parameters; (2...