> [!cite] > ‘Newsletter Ruff Research 2009’. Newsletter. With Jos Hooijmeijer et al.. University of Groningen, 2009. [https://cr-birding.org/sites/default/files/prattachment/Ruff%20%283553%29%20newsletter%202009.pdf](https://cr-birding.org/sites/default/files/prattachment/Ruff%20%283553%29%20newsletter%202009.pdf). --- ‘Faeders played an active role on the leks of both colonies. Both on Texel and in Vancouver, faeders had the tendency to stay in close proximity to the displaying males, and in both situations, this resulted in regular male-male copulations. On Texel, we saw in total 177 mountings of faeders and males (and vice versa) and only 21 mountings of females by males.’ [[Hooijmeijer et al., ‘Newsletter Ruff Research’, 2009|(Hooijmeijer et al. 2009, 13)]] ^112d16 ‘In Vancouver, females did actively solicited copulations, and often preferred copulations with faeders above copulations with regular males.’ [[Hooijmeijer et al., ‘Newsletter Ruff Research’, 2009|(Hooijmeijer et al. 2009, 14)]] ^fbcc42 ‘Faeders seem popular to both the males and the females. Why would that be? The function of the homosexual copulations could be to attract females to the lek, which would be the equivalent of the dance of the dominant male and the satellite.’ [[Hooijmeijer et al., ‘Newsletter Ruff Research’, 2009|(Hooijmeijer et al. 2009, 14)]] ^3131b8 ‘David Lank hypothesised that faeders are not sneakers who steal copulations but that they imitate females to cuckold males. In Vancouver they indeed actively tried to direct males away from the receptive females. Despite their small size, faeders turned out to be super males. Their testes are 2.5 times larger than testes of normal males. This indicates that in a natural situation they do not get many opportunities to copulate. If they do get an opportunity to copulate, they will utilise their augmented size to ensure a large volume of ejaculate.’ [[Hooijmeijer et al., ‘Newsletter Ruff Research’, 2009|(Hooijmeijer et al. 2009, 14)]] ^36e347 ‘Normal males did not produce any faeders. This supports the idea that a specific gene or a set of genes is coding for male type.’ [[Hooijmeijer et al., ‘Newsletter Ruff Research’, 2009|(Hooijmeijer et al. 2009, 14)]]