Cooney, C.R., Varley, Z.K., Nouri, L.O. orcid.org/0000-0003-0397-8699 et al. (3 more authors) (2019) Sexual selection predicts the rate and direction of colour divergence in a large avian radiation. Nature Communications, 10. 1773. ISSN 2041-1723
Abstract
Sexual selection is proposed to be a powerful driver of phenotypic evolution in animal systems. At macroevolutionary scales, sexual selection can theoretically drive both the rate and direction of phenotypic evolution, but this hypothesis remains contentious. Here, we find that differences in the rate and direction of plumage colour evolution are predicted by a proxy for sexual selection intensity (plumage dichromatism) in a large radiation of suboscine passerine birds (Tyrannida). We show that rates of plumage evolution are correlated between the sexes, but that sexual selection has a strong positive effect on male, but not female, interspecific divergence rates. Furthermore, we demonstrate that rapid male plumage divergence is biased towards carotenoid-based (red/yellow) colours widely assumed to represent honest sexual signals. Our results highlight the central role of sexual selection in driving avian colour divergence, and reveal the existence of convergent evolutionary responses of animal signalling traits under sexual selection.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > School of Biosciences (Sheffield) > Department of Animal and Plant Sciences (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number ROYAL SOCIETY UF120016 EUROPEAN RESEARCH COUNCIL TOLERATES - 615709 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 02 May 2019 08:49 |
Last Modified: | 02 May 2019 08:49 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Nature Research (part of Springer Nature) |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-019-09859-7 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:145606 |