We tested the camouflage hypothesis, or the linkage between animal (Saharan rodent) and habitat coloration, on the largest geographical scale yet conducted. We aimed to determine whether phenotypic variation is explained by micro-habitat variation and/or genetic polymorphism to determine 1) the strength of linkage between fur color and local substrate color, and 2) the divergence in fur colorat...

The red coloration produced by the interaction of an aromatic phenol and Millon’s reagent (mercuricnitrate indilutenitrous acid) is one of the most characteristic of the color reactions of the proteins. Among the nineteen known compounds which form the protein molecule only one, p-oxy-a-amino phenyl propionic acid (tyros’n) is of such a nature as to give a coloration with Millon’s reagent and t...

Carotenoid pigments are a common source of red, orange, and yellow coloration in vertebrates. Animals cannot manufacture carotenoids and therefore must obtain them in their diet to produce carotenoid-based coloration. Male great frigatebirds (Fregata minor) display a bright red inflated gular pouch as part of their elaborate courtship display. The basis of this coloration until now has not been...

In the guppy Poecilia reticulata, males exhibit orange spots on their body and tail, and the orange spot patterns are often criteria of female mate choice. The orange spot coloration of the males is determined by the intake of algae, a natural source of carotenoids. Therefore, it is considered that males exhibiting conspicuous orange coloration possess high algal-foraging ability. In the presen...

A plane graph is l-facially k-colourable if its vertices can be coloured with k colours such that any two distinct vertices on a facial segment of length at most l are coloured differently. We prove that every plane graph is 3-facially 11-colourable. As a consequence, we derive that every 2-connected plane graph with maximum face-size at most 7 is cyclically 11-colourable. These two bounds are ...

According to the hypothesis of parasite-mediated sexual selection, for a communication system to work reliably, parasites should reduce the showiness of sexual signals of their host. In this study, we examined whether the expression of breeding coloration in free-ranging adult European Green Lizards (Lacerta viridis (Laurenti, 1768)) is linked with infestation by their common ectoparasite Ixode...

Carotenoid-based plumage coloration of birds has been hypothesized to honestly reflect individual quality, either because carotenoids are difficult to acquire via food or because of a trade-off in allocation of carotenoids between maintenance and signaling functions. We tested whether differential foraging ability is a necessary precondition for maintaining individual differences in carotenoid-...

Fast dynamic control of skin coloration is rare in the animal kingdom, whether it be pigmentary or structural. Iridescent structural coloration results when nanoscale structures disrupt incident light and selectively reflect specific colours. Unlike animals with fixed iridescent coloration (e.g. butterflies), squid iridophores (i.e. aggregations of iridescent cells in the skin) produce dynamica...

Amazonia is famous for high biodiversity, and the highlands of the transition zone between the Andes and the lowlands of the Amazon basin show particularly high species diversity. Hypotheses proposed to explain the high levels of diversity in the highlands include repeated parapatric speciation across ecological gradients spanning the transition zone, repeated allopatric speciation across geogr...

It is commonly assumed that natural selection imposed by predators is the prevailing force driving the evolution of aposematic traits. Here, we demonstrate that aposematic signals are shaped by sexual selection as well. We evaluated sexual selection for coloration brightness in populations of the poison frog Oophaga [Dendrobates] pumilio in Panama's Bocas del Toro archipelago. We assessed femal...