If a male songbird is worried about his mate’s fidelity, should he react violently towards a rival male, or should he sing a song duet with his mate when a rival shows up? A newly published study in the red-backed fairy-wren, a highly promiscuous species with high rates of extra-pair paternity, reveals that physical aggression towards an intruder accomplished nothing, whereas males who sang a duet with their mate had a significantly higher rate of paternity. These results suggest that song duets acted either as acoustic mate-guarding or as male–female vocal negotiations that lead to increased paternity.

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