{"id":4445,"date":"2015-11-04T13:36:23","date_gmt":"2015-11-04T18:36:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/?p=4445"},"modified":"2015-11-12T15:43:47","modified_gmt":"2015-11-12T20:43:47","slug":"4445","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/4445\/","title":{"rendered":"Male songbirds aren&#8217;t colourful, females are just drab<img src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/01\/canada_flag_icon_small.gif\">"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"attachment_4446\" style=\"width: 607px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Shining-Honeycreeper-pair-1024x515.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-4446\" class=\"wp-image-4446\" src=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Shining-Honeycreeper-pair-1024x515.jpg\" alt=\"Shining Honeycreeper males (right) are dramatically more colorful than females (left).\" width=\"597\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Shining-Honeycreeper-pair-1024x515.jpg 1024w, http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Shining-Honeycreeper-pair-1024x515-300x150.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 597px) 100vw, 597px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-4446\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Shining Honeycreeper males (right) are dramatically more colorful than females (left).<\/p><\/div>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The colour differences seen in the plumage of male and female songbirds is mostly from to the effects of sexual selection upon the female, not the male, according to a new analysis. This challenges the long-held view that males developed more colourful plumage because of sexual selection. <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Researchers quantified the colouration of nearly 6,000 species of songbirds. They found that while the colouration of males remained stable, females became more drab when these was less competition for mates, and only increased in colour when there was a high level of competition between females for mates.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/care.diabetesjournals.org\/content\/early\/2015\/10\/29\/dc15-2027.abstract\" target=\"_blank\"><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">Original research paper<\/span><\/a>\u00a0published in <em>Nature\u00a0<\/em>on <strong>November 2<\/strong><span class=\"aBn\" tabindex=\"0\" data-term=\"goog_453723367\"><span class=\"aQJ\"><strong>, 2015<\/strong>.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em><strong>Names and affiliations of selected\u00a0author<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<h4>James Dale,\u00a0Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand<\/h4>\n<h4>Cody J. Dey, Department of Biology, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario<\/h4>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The colour differences seen in the plumage of male and female songbirds is mostly from to the effects of sexual selection upon the female, not the male, according to a new analysis. This challenges the long-held view that males developed more colourful plumage because of sexual selection. Researchers quantified the colouration of nearly 6,000 species [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":4446,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[170,114,917,50,2475],"class_list":["post-4445","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-paper-of-interest","tag-biodiversity","tag-birds","tag-evolution","tag-ontario","tag-sexual-selection"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/Shining-Honeycreeper-pair-1024x515.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s4DqbN-4445","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4445","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4445"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4445\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4450,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4445\/revisions\/4450"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4446"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4445"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4445"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/sciencemediacentre.ca\/site\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4445"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}