New study shows how color pattern evolution lets birds use bright colors for signaling while remaining hidden from predators
Date: February 26, 2020
Source: American Museum of Natural History
A new study examines how color evolved in one of the flashiest groups of parrots -- Australasian lorikeets -- finding that different plumage patches on the birds evolved independently through time. The study, published this week in the journal BMC Evolutionary Biology, helps explain why it's possible for the birds' faces and front sides to display a dazzling variety of colors -- from vibrant ultraviolet blue only visible to other birds to deep crimson and black -- while their wings and backs tend to be the same color: green.
"All birds need to balance being attractive to potential mates while having some kind of camouflage against potential predators," said Brian Smith, an associate curator in the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Ornithology and one of the co-authors of the new study. "So how do lorikeets, which have a very extreme appearance, get so colorful without being predated by lizards or hawks?"
To help answer this question, Smith and Jon Merwin, a Museum research assistant who began the project as a student at Columbia University, took visible-light and UV-light photos of 98 historic Museum specimens of Australasian lorikeets -- those that live in New Guinea, Australia, and surrounding archipelagos -- representing nearly all of the diversity in the group. Many birds can see in the ultraviolet spectrum, to which most humans are blind, so the researchers used a special program that translates color into "bird vision." They collected data from 35 plumage patches on the birds across the face, head, back, wings, breast, and lower abdomen. Those color data were modeled within the tree of life for lorikeets to test whether different patches of the birds are more likely to evolve under certain scenarios.
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