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      A global analysis of bird plumage patterns reveals no association between habitat and camouflage

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          Abstract

          Evidence suggests that animal patterns (motifs) function in camouflage. Irregular mottled patterns can facilitate concealment when stationary in cluttered habitats, whereas regular patterns typically prevent capture during movement in open habitats. Bird plumage patterns have predominantly converged on just four types—mottled (irregular), scales, bars and spots (regular)—and habitat could be driving convergent evolution in avian patterning. Based on sensory ecology, we therefore predict that irregular patterns would be associated with visually noisy closed habitats and that regular patterns would be associated with open habitats. Regular patterns have also been shown to function in communication for sexually competing males to stand-out and attract females, so we predict that male breeding plumage patterns evolved in both open and closed habitats. Here, taking phylogenetic relatedness into account, we investigate ecological selection for bird plumage patterns across the class Aves. We surveyed plumage patterns in 80% of all avian species worldwide. Of these, 2,756 bird species have regular and irregular plumage patterns as well as habitat information. In this subset, we tested whether adult breeding/non-breeding plumages in each sex, and juvenile plumages, were associated with the habitat types found within the species’ geographical distributions. We found no evidence for an association between habitat and plumage patterns across the world’s birds and little phylogenetic signal. We also found that species with regular and irregular plumage patterns were distributed randomly across the world’s eco-regions without being affected by habitat type. These results indicate that at the global spatial and taxonomic scale, habitat does not predict convergent evolution in bird plumage patterns, contrary to the camouflage hypothesis.

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              Signals, Signal Conditions, and the Direction of Evolution

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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Journal
                PeerJ
                PeerJ
                peerj
                peerj
                PeerJ
                PeerJ Inc. (San Francisco, USA )
                2167-8359
                9 November 2016
                2016
                : 4
                : e2658
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge , Cambridge, United Kingdom
                [2 ]The Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford , Oxford, United Kingdom
                [3 ]Department of Animal and Plant Sciences, University of Sheffield , Sheffield, United Kingdom
                [4 ]Center for Interdisciplinary Research in Biology, College de France , Paris, France
                Article
                2658
                10.7717/peerj.2658
                5111890
                a4fdbacd-daab-4cea-bc23-2d2ef8477746
                ©2016 Somveille et al.

                This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.

                History
                : 18 May 2016
                : 5 October 2016
                Funding
                Funded by: Entente Cordiale Scholarship
                Funded by: Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council studentship
                Funded by: Cambridge Overseas Trust
                This research was funded by an Entente Cordiale Scholarship to M.S., a Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council studentship to K.L.A.M. and the Cambridge Overseas Trust to T-L.G. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Biodiversity
                Ecology
                Evolutionary Studies
                Zoology

                ecological selection,camouflage,plumage patterns,signalling,macroevolution,natural selection

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