Pheomelanin-based colouration is correlated with indices of flying strategies in the Barn Owl

Abstract

Pheomelanin-based colouration is correlated with indices of flying strategies in the Barn Owl Motti Charter, Yossi Leshem, Ido Izhaki & Alexandre Roulin 1 2 3 Your article is protected by copyright and all rights are held exclusively by Dt. Ornithologen-Gesellschaft e.V.. This e-offprint is for personal use only and shall not be selfarchived in electronic repositories. If you wish to self-archive your article, please use the accepted manuscript version for posting on your own website. You may further deposit the accepted manuscript version in any repository, provided it is only made publicly available 12 months after official publication or later and provided acknowledgement is given to the original source of publication and a link is inserted to the published article on Springer's website. The link must be accompanied by the following text: "The final publication is available at link.springer.com".

The genetic basis of color-related local adaptation in a ring-like colonization around the Mediterranean

“…The supposition that rufous coloration is correlated to a disperser phenotype (Roulin , ; Charter et al. , ; Van den Brink et al. ) adds another interesting perspective in this context, as theoretical models suggest that increased dispersal propensity itself could have conferred rufous birds with an additional advantage during range expansion (Travis and Dytham ).…”

“…Together with its almost complete absence in the south of the range, this suggests that the MC1R RUFOUS variant arose either shortly before or during the colonization of Central Europe. The supposition that rufous coloration is correlated to a disperser phenotype (Roulin 2004(Roulin , 2013Charter et al 2012Charter et al , 2015Van den Brink et al 2012) adds another interesting perspective in this context, as theoretical models suggest that increased dispersal propensity itself could have conferred rufous birds with an additional advantage during range expansion (Travis and Dytham 2002). This leads us to hypothesize that the rapid colonization of Northern and Eastern Europe by barn owls may have been triggered by the derived phenotype's ability to cope with continental environments, and accelerated by the phenotype's enhanced dispersal ability, or vice versa.…”

“…) and intense flying (Charter et al. ), and may suggest that rufous coloration is connected to a disperser phenotype.…”

“…Rufous juveniles develop better with limited food conditions ) and show more altruistic behavior than nonrufous juveniles . Moreover, several studies link rufous coloration to increased juvenile dispersal distance (Van den Brink et al 2012;Roulin 2013) and phenotypic traits enhancing longdistance flight (longer wings, Roulin 2004;Charter et al 2012) and intense flying (Charter et al 2015), and may suggest that rufous coloration is connected to a disperser phenotype.…”

Sex‐linked inheritance, genetic correlations and sexual dimorphism in three melanin‐based colour traits in the barn owl

“…This finding suggests that the three melanin-based traits may have a more redundant function in males than in females. Accordingly, in females (and to a lower extent in males) the size of black spots is related to behaviour and physiology (Roulin & Ducrest, 2011), and pheomelanin-based coloration plays a role in the adaptation to local conditions , probably associated with predator-prey relationships (Charter et al, 2015).…”