Abstract Courtship displays are behaviours aimed to facilitate attraction and mating with the opposite sex and are very common across the animal kingdom. Most courtship displays are multimodal, meaning that they are composed of concomitant signals occurring in different sensory modalities. Although courtship often strongly influences reproductive success, the question of why and how males use multimodal courtship to increase their fitness has not yet received much attention. Very little is known about the role of different components of male courtship and their relative importance for females. Indeed, most of the work on courtship displays have focused on effects on female choice, often neglecting other possible roles. Additionally, a number of scientists have recently stressed the importance of considering the complexity of a display and the interactions between its different components in order to grasp all the information contained in those multimodal signals. Unfortunately, these methods have not yet been extensively adapted in courtship studies. The aim of this study was to review what is currently known about the functional significance of courtship displays, particularly about the role of multimodality in the courtship communication context. Emphasis is placed on those cases where a complete picture of the communication system can only be assessed by taking complexity and interaction between different modalities into account.

中文翻译：

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多模式求偶显示的演变和功能


摘要 求偶展示是一种旨在促进异性吸引和交配的行为，在动物王国中非常常见。大多数求爱表现都是多模式的，这意味着它们由以不同感官模式出现的伴随信号组成。尽管求偶通常会对繁殖成功产生强烈影响，但雄性为何以及如何使用多模式求爱来提高自身健康水平的问题尚未引起太多关注。人们对雄性求爱的不同组成部分的作用及其对雌性的相对重要性知之甚少。事实上，大多数关于求爱表现的研究都集中在对女性选择的影响上，往往忽视了其他可能的角色。此外，许多科学家最近强调了考虑显示器的复杂性及其不同组件之间的相互作用的重要性，以便掌握这些多模态信号中包含的所有信息。不幸的是，这些方法尚未广泛应用于求偶研究中。本研究的目的是回顾目前已知的求爱展示的功能意义，特别是多模态在求爱沟通背景下的作用。重点放在那些只能通过考虑不同模式之间的复杂性和交互来评估通信系统的完整情况的情况。