Female promiscuity can function to acquire both direct and indirect benefits from their social mate and extra‐pair males. In many raptor species, intense mate‐feeding significantly contributes to female energy requirements before and during egg laying. Moreover, females may use mate‐feeding effort to assess male quality. In this study of the lesser kestrel Falco naumanni, we aimed at experimentally manipulating the female's perception of mate quality by providing females with extra food during egg laying, and evaluated the occurrence of extra‐pair paternity in food‐supplemented and control broods by parentage analyses. No extra‐pair offspring (EPO) was found among 19 food‐supplemented broods, whereas EPO occurred in five out of 17 control broods. No significant differences in morphological traits, body condition and reproductive success were found between faithful and unfaithful females. However, clutches containing EPO were laid later in the breeding season. Moreover, un‐cuckolded males had longer tarsi than cuckolded ones, indicating larger body size. Hence, extra food provisioning and early breeding reduced the occurrence of EPO in lesser kestrels. In addition, we confirmed the occurrence of intraspecific brood parasitism, as five nestlings were not the offspring of the brooding female. The results of our food‐provisioning experiment support the idea that mate‐feeding ability is a reliable indicator of male quality, and are in accordance with the hypothesis that male mate‐feeding behaviour is a sexually selected trait.

中文翻译：

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额外的食物供应减少了小茶est Falco naumanni中的一对父子关系

女性滥交可以起到从社交伴侣和成对男性中获得直接和间接收益的作用。在许多猛禽中，强烈的交配对产卵前和产卵期间的女性能量需求有很大贡献。此外，雌性可能会通过配合喂养的努力来评估雄性质量。在对小茶est的研究中，法尔科·诺曼尼，我们的目标是通过在产卵期间为雌性提供额外的食物，以实验方式来控制雌性对配偶质量的看法，并通过亲子关系分析评估在增补和控制育雏中成对父系的发生。在补充食物的19个育雏中未发现超配对后代（EPO），而在17个对照育种中有5个发生了EPO。忠实和不忠实的女性之间在形态特征，身体状况和生殖成功方面没有显着差异。但是，在繁殖季节后期放置了含有EPO的离合器。此外，未戴绿帽子的男性比戴绿帽子的男性的tar子更长，表明身材更大。因此，额外的食物供应和早期繁殖减少了红k中EPO的发生。此外，我们确认发生种内育雏寄生，因为有五个雏鸟不是育雏雌性的后代。我们的食物供应实验结果支持这样的观点，即配偶能力是雄性品质的可靠指标，并且符合以下假设：雄性配偶行为是性选择的特征。