• mate choice
• olfaction
• pheomelanin
• Taeniopygia guttata

Females should assess the quality of candidate partners very carefully and they should select the most suitable one(s) because of their investment in reproduction. In order to do so, they can use several sensory cues that may carry informations about different traits, representing the present or past conditions of individuals. The purpose of this thesis is to present an experimental study designed to test the relative importance of visual, acoustic and olfactory cues in female mate choice decision in a sexually dimorphic, socially monogamous songbird: the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata). Results are discussed considering the framework of current knowledge about the issue, and their physiological and evolutionary basis is inves- tigated.