Do female ornaments indicate quality in eider ducks?

The fitness consequences of female ornamentation remain little studied and the results are often contradictory. Female ornamentation may be an artefact of a genetic correlation with male ornamentation, but this possibility can be disregarded if the ornament only occurs in females. Female-specific white wing bars in eiders (Somateria mollissima) have been suggested to indicate individual quality, and we studied size variation in this trait in relation to key fitness components and quality attributes. We found that clutch size, body condition, female age, hatching date and success were unrelated to female ornament size; ornament size was explained by its size in the previous year. In contrast, good body condition was associated with hatching success. These results suggest that the breadth of the white wing bars does not indicate individual quality in our study population.