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A novel method for quantifying the glossiness of animals

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Abstract

The glossy sheen of healthy hair is an ideal of human beauty; however, glossiness has never been quantified in the context of non-human animal signaling. Glossiness, the specular reflectance characteristic of polished surfaces, has the potential to act as a signal of quality because it depends upon material integrity and cleanliness. Here, we undertook two studies of glossiness in avian plumage to determine (a) the repeatability of a recently developed measure of glossiness, (b) the relationship between glossiness and conventional measures of coloration, and (c) how glossiness is associated with quality signaling. Using museum specimens of three North American bird species with glossy plumage (red-winged blackbird, Agelaius phoeniceus; great-tailed grackle, Quiscalus mexicanus; Chihuahuan raven, Corvus cryptoleucus), we found that the glossiness measure was highly repeatable for all species and was significantly correlated with plumage coloration (e.g., chroma, brightness) in male great-tailed grackles. We then used wild-caught grackles to examine sexual dimorphism in plumage glossiness and its correlation to a potentially sexually selected trait in this species, male tail length. We found that males were significantly glossier than females and that male, but not female, glossiness correlated positively with tail length. This study provides a repeatable method to measure glossiness and highlights its potential as a signal of individual quality in animals.

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Acknowledgements

All work was performed under Arizona State University Animal Care and Use protocol 05-764R, United States Fish and Wildlife Service permit #MB088806-0, and Arizona State Game and Fish scientific collecting permit SP797514. We thank Katherine Butler, Mimi Kessler, Caroline Mead, ASU DACT, and Tempe Gordon Biersch for their help with grackle capture. We thank Dr. Christopher Witt, Andrew Johnson, and the Museum of Southwestern Biology at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, for access to study skins. We thank Dr. Martin Stevens and Dr. Isamu Motoyoshi for advice on image analysis and two anonymous reviewers whose comments and suggestions improved our manuscript. This research was supported by funding from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the School of Life Science at Arizona State University (to K. J. M.). M. G. M. and L. A. T. were supported by National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships during the preparation of this manuscript.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, 85287-4501, USA

    Matthew B. Toomey, Michael W. Butler, Melissa G. Meadows, Lisa A. Taylor, H. Bobby Fokidis & Kevin J. McGraw

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  1. Matthew B. Toomey
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  2. Michael W. Butler
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  3. Melissa G. Meadows
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  4. Lisa A. Taylor
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  5. H. Bobby Fokidis
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  6. Kevin J. McGraw
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Correspondence to Matthew B. Toomey.

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Communicated by S. Pruett-Jones

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Toomey, M.B., Butler, M.W., Meadows, M.G. et al. A novel method for quantifying the glossiness of animals. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 64, 1047–1055 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-010-0926-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-010-0926-z

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