The term honesty in animal communication is controversial because in non-technical usage it implies intent, to discriminate deception from honesty in human interactions. However, biologists use the phrase "honest signals" in a direct, statistical sense. Biological signals, like warning calls or resplendent tail feathers, are honest if they truly convey useful information to the receiver. That is, the signal trait conveys to the receiver the presence of an otherwise unobservable factor. Honest biological signals do not need to be perfectly informative, reducing uncertainty to zero; all they need to be useful is to be correct "on average", so that certain behavioural responses to the signal are advantageous, statistically, compared to the behaviour that would occur in absence of the signal. Ultimately the value of the signalled information depends on the extent to which it allows the receiver to increase its fitness. Hence, "honest" signals are evolutionarily stable.