Abstract
Sending color signals to conspecifics may attract predators, leading to opposing selection pressures on the evolution of signal expression and display behavior in animals. The costs of signaling can be reduced, however, because conspicuousness is the combined result of the reflectance spectra of the displayer's color pattern and the spectra of ambient light illuminating the animal. Changes in ambient light can alter conspicuousness, even when chemical and structural color-generating mechanisms remain constant, potentially allowing animals to display their colors most fully in light environments where the benefits are greatest relative to the costs. Using spectroradiometric methods, we determined how light habitat use affects conspicuousness in adult males of the Wire-tailed Manakin Pipra filicauda, a lekking bird species with vivid plumage colors. We studied three aspects of visibility, including properties of the entire color pattern, visual contrast within an individual's plumage and a bird's contrast relative to its visual background. Wire-tailed Manakins usually displayed in forest shade environments, which reduced their conspicuousness at larger viewing distances, while maximizing visual contrast within the plumage color pattern at close viewing distances. Compared to sunspots, ambient light in forest shade reduces the contrast of individual bird colors with the background at close viewing distance. However, background contrast of individual bird colors in the shade was still relatively higher during sunny than during cloudy weather which may explain why males were more active when the sun was not blocked by clouds. Assuming that the visual perceptions of predators and other manakins do not differ from the reflectance patterns we measured, Wire-tailed manakins tend to display in light environments that reduce the conflicts between avoiding long distance detection by predators and displaying conspicuous color signals to visiting females.
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Acknowledgements
We gratefully thank M. Théry, R. Wagner, D. Blomqvist, two anonymous reviewers and the associate editor, J. Dickinson, for critical comments and discussions which greatly improved this manuscript. We also would like to thank C. Budde, C. Sandforth and G. Odenwälder for helping to net and band birds. H. Kühbauer and S. Laube gave valuable hints for the location of leks. This study was supported financially by the Austrian Fonds zur Förderung der wissenschaftlichen Forschung, project P11563-BIO. It was conducted as part of the collaborative research project of the Austrian Academy of Science and the Ministerio del Ambiente y de los Recursos Naturales Renovables in Venezuela. Treatment of birds complied with the current laws of the country in which research was performed (i.e. Venezuela).
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Heindl, M., Winkler, H. Interacting effects of ambient light and plumage color patterns in displaying Wire-tailed Manakins (Aves, Pipridae). Behav Ecol Sociobiol 53, 153–162 (2003). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-002-0562-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-002-0562-3