Departamento de Ecología Funcional y Evolutiva, Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas (CSIC), Almería 04120, Spain.
Unidad Asociada (CSIC): Coevolución: Cucos, Hospedadores y Bacterias Simbiontes, Universidad de Granada, Granada 18071, Spain.
Biol Lett. 2024 Nov;20(11):20240535. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2024.0535. Epub 2024 Nov 20.
Cosmetic colourations of animals have been mainly studied in scenarios of sexual selection, while there has been no assessment of the partial contribution of cosmetics to the final colouration of begging-related traits. In birds, the uropygial gland is functional soon after hatching, and we experimentally investigated the effects of uropygial secretion on mouth-flange colouration in spotless starling () nestlings. Nestlings' flange colouration was measured with a spectrophotometer before and after being either cleaned of, or painted with, its own uropygial secretion. After cleaning, flanges were brighter, more UV and less yellow-red coloured (chroma). Instead, painting the mouth flanges of nestlings with their own uropygial secretion did not modify any of the considered colour components. Our findings therefore show that the uropygial secretion of nestlings alters their beak colouration and open the possibility for future research to investigate the role of uropygial secretion in reinforcing the signalling role of begging-related traits involved in parent-offspring communication.
动物的美容色彩主要在性选择的场景中进行研究，而对于化妆品对与乞食相关特征的最终色彩的局部贡献还没有评估。在鸟类中，尾脂腺在孵化后很快就开始发挥作用，我们通过实验研究了尾脂腺分泌物对纯色八哥（）雏鸟喙部距颜色的影响。在清洁或涂抹其自身的尾脂腺分泌物前后，使用分光光度计测量雏鸟的距部颜色。清洁后，距部颜色更亮，更多紫外线，更少黄红色（彩度）。相反，用雏鸟自己的尾脂腺分泌物涂抹鸟嘴距部并没有改变任何考虑的颜色成分。因此，我们的研究结果表明，雏鸟的尾脂腺分泌物改变了它们的喙部颜色，并为未来的研究提供了可能性，以研究尾脂腺分泌物在加强与乞食相关特征的信号作用中的作用，这些特征涉及亲代与子代之间的交流。
