faeders

Noun

faeder (plural faeders)

1. A male ruff (bird, Philomachus pugnax, syn. Calidris pugnax) that permanently mimics a female so as to gain access to mating territories and "steal" matings.
   • Here, we describe a rare female-like morph of ruffs: the ‘missing’ third alternative mating strategy, which we have called ‘faeder’. Faeders are slightly larger than females and in late April have testes 2.5 time the size of testes of normal males.2006 June 22, Joop Jukema, “Permanent female mimics in a lekking shorebird”, in Biology Letters