Evolutionary predictors of the specific colors of birds.

Animal coloration is one of the most conspicuous aspects of human-perceived organismal diversity, yet also one of the least understood. In particular, explaining why species have specific colors (e.g., blue vs. red) has proven elusive. Here, we quantify for nearly all bird species, the proportion of the body covered by each of 12 human-visible color categories, and test whether existing theory can predict the direction of color evolution. The most common colors are black, white, gray and brown, while the rarest are green, blue, purple, and red. Males have more blue, purple, red, or black, whereas females have more yellow, brown, or gray. Sexual dichromatism is partly due to sexual selection favoring ornamental colors in males but not in females. However, sexual selection also correlated positively with brown in both sexes. Strong social selection favors red and black, colors used in agonistic signaling, with the strongest effects in females. Reduced predation risk selects against cryptic colors (e.g., brown) and favors specific ornamental colors (e.g., black). Nocturnality is mainly associated with brown. The effects of habitat use support the sensory drive theory for camouflage and signaling. Darker colors are more common in species living in wet and cold climates, matching ecogeographical rules. Our study unambiguously supports existing theories of color evolution across an entire class of vertebrates, but much variation remains unexplained.

Sex roles, parental care and offspring growth in two contrasting coucal species.

The decision to provide parental care is often associated with trade-offs, because resources allocated to parental care typically cannot be invested in self-maintenance or mating. In most animals, females provide more parental care than males, but the reason for this pattern is still debated in evolutionary ecology. To better understand sex differences in parental care and its consequences, we need to study closely related species where the sexes differ in offspring care. We investigated parental care in relation to offspring growth in two closely related coucal species that fundamentally differ in sex roles and parental care, but live in the same food-rich habitat with a benign climate and have a similar breeding phenology. Incubation patterns differed and uniparental male black coucals fed their offspring two times more often than female and male white-browed coucals combined. Also, white-browed coucals had more 'off-times' than male black coucals, during which they perched and preened. However, these differences in parental care were not reflected in offspring growth, probably because white-browed coucals fed their nestlings a larger proportion of frogs than insects. A food-rich habitat with a benign climate may be a necessary, but-perhaps unsurprisingly-is not a sufficient factor for the evolution of uniparental care. In combination with previous results (Goymann et al. 2015 J. Evol. Biol. 28, 1335-1353 (doi:10.1111/jeb.12657)), these data suggest that white-browed coucals may cooperate in parental care, because they lack opportunities to become polygamous rather than because both parents were needed to successfully raise all offspring. Our case study supports recent theory suggesting that permissive environmental conditions in combination with a particular life history may induce sexual selection in females. A positive feedback loop among sexual selection, body size and adult sex-ratio may then stabilize reversed sex roles in competition and parental care.

Females alter their song when challenged in a sex-role reversed bird species.

Birdsong serves to attract mates and to deter territorial rivals. Even though song is not restricted to males, this dual function has almost exclusively been demonstrated for male song. To test the generality of hypotheses on birdsong, we investigated female song in the sex-role reversed, classically polyandrous African black coucal (Centropus grillii) in the context of female-female competition. We compared spontaneously vocalizing females with females vocally responding to a playback simulating a conspecific intruder. Females changed vocal parameters in response to playbacks: They lowered the pitch of their vocalizations and enhanced the duration of song elements when being challenged. Also, the composition of the vocalizations was altered. There was no significant correlation between pitch and body size parameters in spontaneous song, but there was for response songs, with larger females having a lower pitch. These changes in vocal properties suggest that the vocalizations are important for mutual assessment of competitive abilities in females. Our findings confirm the general role of intrasexual competition in vocal communication of birds. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00265-009-0836-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.