Bonnaffé, W, Martin, M, Mugabo, M et al. (2 more authors) (2018) Ontogenetic trajectories of body coloration reveal its function as a multicomponent nonsenescent signal. Ecology and Evolution, 8 (24). pp. 12299-12307. ISSN 2045-7758
Abstract
The understanding of developmental patterns of body coloration is challenging because of the multicomponent nature of color signals and the multiple selective pressures acting upon them, which further depend on the sex of the bearer and area of display. Pigmentary colors are thought to be strongly involved in sexual selection, while structural colors are thought to generally associate with conspecifics interactions and improve the discrimination of pigmentary colors. Yet, it remains unclear whether age dependency in each color component is consistent with their potential function. Here, we address lifelong ontogenetic variation in three color components (i.e. UV, pigmentary, and skin background colors) in a birth cohort of common lizards Zootoca vivipara across three ventral body regions (i.e. throat, chest, and belly). All three color components developed sexual dichromatism, with males displaying stronger pigmentary and UV colors but weaker skin background coloration than females. The development of color components led to a stronger sexual dichromatism on the concealed ventral region than on the throat. No consistent signs of late‐life decay in color components were found except for a deceleration of UV reflectance increase with age on the throat of males. These results suggest that body color components in common lizards are primarily nonsenescent sexual signals, but that the balance between natural and sexual selection may be altered by the conspicuousness of the area of display. These results further support the view that skin coloration is a composite trait constituted of multiple color components conveying multiple signals depending on age, sex, and body location.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 The Authors. Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | age‐dependent coloration; carotenoids; senescence; structural coloration |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Biological Sciences (Leeds) > School of Biology (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 09 Jan 2019 15:13 |
Last Modified: | 09 Jan 2019 15:13 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/ece3.4369 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:140776 |
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