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Sexual selection predicts the rate and direction of colour divergence in a large avian radiation

Cooney, CR; Varley, ZK; Nouri, LO; Moody, CJA; Jardine, MD; Thomas, GH; (2019) Sexual selection predicts the rate and direction of colour divergence in a large avian radiation. Nature Communications , 10 , Article 1773. 10.1038/s41467-019-09859-7. Green open access

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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.

Type: Article
Title: Sexual selection predicts the rate and direction of colour divergence in a large avian radiation
Location: England
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-019-09859-7
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-09859-7
Language: English
Additional information: Open Access 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/.
Keywords: Animals, Biological Evolution, Carotenoids, Color, Datasets as Topic, Feathers, Male, Mating Preference, Animal, Passeriformes, Phylogeny, Pigmentation, Sex Characteristics
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Life Sciences > Div of Biosciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10126954
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