Dunning Jamie, Sheard Catherine, Endler John A
Department of Life Sciences, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 3AA, UK.
Proc Biol Sci. 2025 Apr;292(2044):20241728. doi: 10.1098/rspb.2024.1728. Epub 2025 Apr 9.
Animals communicate using multiple sensory channels, including via vision. The colourful plumage of birds is a model system to study visual communication, having evolved through a complex interplay of processes, acting not only on the ability of a plumage patch to convey information, but also in response to physiological and environmental factors. Although much research on inter-specific variation in bird plumage has concentrated on sexual selection, much less has considered the role of non-sexual selection and how it is affected by the joint effects of avian viewing conditions and receiver vision. Here, we combined a taxonomically diverse database of avian plumage reflectance measurements with bird vision models, habitat and behavioural data to test the effect of three factors that affect viewing conditions-habitat openness, migratory preference and diel activity-on avian plumage contrast, accounting for shared evolutionary history and variation in avian visual systems. We find that habitat structure and migratory preference predicted plumage visual contrast, especially for females. Our study therefore demonstrates the important role of non-sexually selected traits, viewing conditions and bird vision, in shaping avian plumage contrast.
动物通过多种感官渠道进行交流，包括视觉。鸟类色彩斑斓的羽毛是研究视觉交流的一个模型系统，它是通过一系列复杂过程的相互作用而进化而来的，这些过程不仅作用于羽毛斑块传达信息的能力，还会对生理和环境因素做出反应。尽管对鸟类羽毛种间差异的许多研究都集中在性选择上，但很少有人考虑非性选择的作用以及它如何受到鸟类观察条件和接收者视觉的联合影响。在这里，我们将一个分类多样的鸟类羽毛反射率测量数据库与鸟类视觉模型、栖息地和行为数据相结合，以测试影响观察条件的三个因素——栖息地开阔度、迁徙偏好和昼夜活动——对鸟类羽毛对比度的影响，同时考虑到共同的进化历史和鸟类视觉系统的差异。我们发现，栖息地结构和迁徙偏好可以预测羽毛的视觉对比度，尤其是对雌性而言。因此，我们的研究证明了非性选择的特征、观察条件和鸟类视觉在塑造鸟类羽毛对比度方面的重要作用。
