Beak colouration of starling (Sturnus unicolor) males depends on the length of their throat feathers
Within the context of complex sexual signalling, most research has focussed on exploring the associations between several signals and/or their relationships with different proxies of individual quality. However, very few studies have focused on checking whether the expression of one signal is condit...
| Autores: | , , , , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Estado: | Versión aceptada para publicación |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2020 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC) |
| Repositorio: | DIGITAL.CSIC. Repositorio Institucional del CSIC |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:digital.csic.es:10261/204810 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10261/204810 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Beak colour Body condition Interacting signals Multiple signals Ornamental feathers length Sexually dimorphic characters |
| Sumario: | Within the context of complex sexual signalling, most research has focussed on exploring the associations between several signals and/or their relationships with different proxies of individual quality. However, very few studies have focused on checking whether the expression of one signal is conditioned by the expression of the others. Here, by experimentally shortening the throat feathers of male spotless starlings (Sturnus unicolor), we evaluated the influence of this trait on the colour expression of the bea19 base. In addition, we tested the relationship between these two sexually dimorphic characters with traits indicating individual quality such as body condition and colour reflectance at the wavelength related to carotenes in the tip of the beak. Our results show that the colouration of the beak base in males, but not in females, is positively related to body condition and to the length of ornamental throat feathers. Moreover, the experimental shortening of throat feathers in males had a negative effect on the blue chroma intensity of their beak base one year after manipulation. These results support for the first time a causal link between the expression of two sexually dimorphic characters, which is essential to understand their functionality in a multiple signalling framework |
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