Our knowledge of Cretaceous plumage is limited by the fossil record itself: compression fossils surrounding skeletons lack the finest morphological details and seldom preserve visible traces of colour, while discoveries in amber have been disassociated from their source animals. Here we report the osteology, plumage and pterylosis of two exceptionally preserved theropod wings from Burmese amber...

The foraging strategies of wading birds may be influenced by their degree of crypsis to aquatic prey. White plumage has been hypothesized to be adaptive for herons hunting in open water habitats. We tested this hypothesis with laboratory and field experiments with multiple prey species. We investigated the response of crayfish, Procambarus spp., and mosquitofish, Gambusia affinis, to whiteand d...

Sexual signals often compromise camouflage because of their conspicuousness. Pigmentation patterns, on the contrary, aid in camouflage. It was hypothesized that a particular type of pattern-barred plumage in birds, whereby pigmented bars extend across feathers-could simultaneously signal individual quality, because disruptions of these patterns should be perceptually salient at close range and ...

Fossil feathers often preserve evidence of melanosomes-micrometre-scale melanin-bearing organelles that have been used to infer original colours and patterns of the plumage of dinosaurs. Such reconstructions acknowledge that evidence from other colour-producing mechanisms is presently elusive and assume that melanosome geometry is not altered during fossilization. Here, we provide the first tes...

Many colour ornaments are composite traits consisting of at least four components, which themselves may be more complex, determined by independent evolutionary pathways, and potentially being under different environmental control. To date, little evidence exists that several different components of colour elaboration are condition dependent and no direct evidence exists that different ornamenta...

The white-winged fairy-wren (Malurus leucopterus) exhibits striking plumage colour variation between the Australian mainland and two islands (Dirk Hartog Island and Barrow Island) off the coast of Western Australia. Adult males on the mainland are bright blue with white wings and adult males on the two islands are black with white wings. To examine evolutionary relationships within this species...

1. Melanin coloration is the most common type of colour in animals. Many species use melanin-based black, brown, grey or earth-toned colours as intraspecific signals of quality. 2. Melanin comes in two main forms in vertebrates – eumelanin and phaeomelanin – and these are said to create different colours, with eumelanin giving a darker black, brown or grey appearance and phaeomelanin a lighter ...

Avian plumage traits are the targets of both natural and sexual selection. Consequently, genetic changes resulting in plumage variation among closely related taxa might represent important evolutionary events. The molecular basis of such differences, however, is unknown in most cases. Sequence variation in the melanocortin-1 receptor gene (MC1R) is associated with melanistic phenotypes in many ...

567 The Blue-black Grassquit Volatinia jacarina (Linnaeus, 1766), popularly known in Brazil as “tiziu”, is an inhabitant of open areas, and also common near cities (MarcondesMachado, 1988). The most remarkable characteristic of this species is the male blackish blue iridescent plumage, especially during the reproductive season (Queiroz, 2008). Nevertheless, variation in this colouration pattern...

In many bird populations, individuals display one of several genetically inherited colour morphs. Colour polymorphism can be maintained by several mechanisms one of which being frequency-dependent selection with colour morphs signalling alternative mating strategies. One morph may be dominant and territorial, and another one adopt a sneaky behaviour to gain access to fertile females. We tested ...