Male age is associated with extra-pair paternity, but not with extra-pair mating behaviour

Extra-pair paternity is the result of copulation between a female and a male other than her social partner. In socially monogamous birds, old males are most likely to sire extra-pair offspring. The male manipulation and female choice hypotheses predict that age-specific male mating behaviour could explain this old-over-young male advantage. These hypotheses have been difficult to test because copulations and the individuals involved are hard to observe. Here, we studied the mating behaviour and pairing contexts of captive house sparrows, Passer domesticus. Our set-up mimicked the complex social environment experienced by wild house sparrows. We found that middle-aged males, that would be considered old in natural populations, gained most extra-pair paternity. However, both female solicitation behaviour and subsequent extra-pair matings were unrelated to male age. Further, copulations were more likely when solicited by females than those initiated by males (i.e. unsolicited copulations), and unsolicited within-pair copulations were more common than unsolicited extrapair copulations. To conclude, our results did not support either hypotheses regarding age-specific male mating behaviour. Instead, female choice, independent of male age, governed copulation success, especially in an extra-pair context and post-copulatory mechanisms might determine why older males sire more extra-pair offspring.