Living in a neighbourhood: a multi-male model of bower marauding

Bowerbirds are known for their unique courtship behaviour, where males build complex bowers for the sole purpose of attracting females. Besides attempting to attract females to their bowers, males often visit the bowers of their rivals in order to destroy them or steal their decorations. A previous two-player, game-theoretical model demonstrated that bower marauding is an evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS) compared with guarding bowers under most conditions. Here, we extend the two-male case via agent-based simulations of interactions of multiple males in a neighbourhood of varying spatial configurations. We found that: 1. The earlier result from the two-male model is validated via simulation; 2. In the multi-male case, marauding is generally better than guarding, however the outcome depends on number of males, inter-bower distance, and the proportion of males marauding. Marauding was more beneficial when the density of males was lower and when a smaller percentage of males were marauders. Our results combined with earlier models demonstrate the potential importance of marauding as a successful strategy by male bowerbirds, and they highlight the importance of quantifying marauding rates of individual males and how those rates vary with population size and dispersion.