🚨 NEW PREPRINT ALERT! 🚨
With talented SUNY Oswego undergrad Kristina Davis and Black Tern Whisperer Dave Shealer, we used reflectance spectrometry to see if Black Terns might use plumage color as a sexual signal. 1/5
📷 Ian K. Barker
If you've ever watched Black Terns, you know that males and females are nearly impossible to tell apart. But our quantitative analyses showed a subtle, but significant difference: males are darker than females. 2/5
Even though the difference is minor, avian visual models suggest it is perceptible to the signal receiver. Especially since Black Terns occur in wide open habitat conducive to visual signaling, we're pretty confident they can use plumage to distinguish the sexes. 3/5
We also compared plumage color between mated individuals and found an unexpected pattern of disassortative mating: more black and saturated birds pair with more gray and unsaturated birds. Plumage may be a signal allowing individuals to choose a genetically dissimilar mate. 4/5
Most bird color studies focus on flashy species with obvious sex differences. Here, we found that even drab, seemingly monochromatic species can show subtle variation that is nearly impossible for humans to perceive! 5/5 tinyurl.com/5berv84a
