TY - JOUR
T1 - The chemical basis of a signal of individual identity
T2 - shell pigment concentrations track the unique appearance of Common Murre eggs
AU - Hauber, Mark E.
AU - Bond, Alexander L.
AU - Kouwenberg, Amy-Lee
AU - Robertson, Gregory J.
AU - Hansen, Erpur S.
AU - Holford, Mande
AU - Dainson, Miri
AU - Luro, Alec
AU - Dale, James
N1 - Copyright The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. Produced while A Bond was at RSPB Centre for Conservation Science
PY - 2019/4/10
Y1 - 2019/4/10
N2 - In group-living species with parental care, the accurate recognition of one's own young is critical to fitness. Because discriminating offspring within a large colonial group may be challenging, progeny of colonial breeders often display familial or individual identity signals to elicit and receive parental provisions from their own parents. For instance, the common murre (or common guillemot: Uria aalge) is a colonially breeding seabird that does not build a nest and lays and incubates an egg with an individually unique appearance. How the shell's physical and chemical properties generate this individual variability in coloration and maculation has not been studied in detail. Here, we quantified two characteristics of the avian-visible appearance of murre eggshells collected from the wild: background coloration spectra and maculation density. As predicted by the individual identity hypothesis, there was no statistical relationship between avian-perceivable shell background coloration and maculation densi...
AB - In group-living species with parental care, the accurate recognition of one's own young is critical to fitness. Because discriminating offspring within a large colonial group may be challenging, progeny of colonial breeders often display familial or individual identity signals to elicit and receive parental provisions from their own parents. For instance, the common murre (or common guillemot: Uria aalge) is a colonially breeding seabird that does not build a nest and lays and incubates an egg with an individually unique appearance. How the shell's physical and chemical properties generate this individual variability in coloration and maculation has not been studied in detail. Here, we quantified two characteristics of the avian-visible appearance of murre eggshells collected from the wild: background coloration spectra and maculation density. As predicted by the individual identity hypothesis, there was no statistical relationship between avian-perceivable shell background coloration and maculation densi...
U2 - 10.1098/rsif.2019.0115
DO - 10.1098/rsif.2019.0115
M3 - Article
SN - 1742-5689
VL - 16
JO - Journal of the Royal Society, Interface / the Royal Society
JF - Journal of the Royal Society, Interface / the Royal Society
IS - 153
ER -