Publications by authors named "Ester Martinez-Renau"
Cosmetic colourations of animals have been mainly studied in scenarios of sexual selection, while there has been no assessment of the partial contribution of cosmetics to the final colouration of begging-related traits. In birds, the uropygial gland is functional soon after hatching, and we experimentally investigated the effects of uropygial secretion on mouth-flange colouration in spotless starling () nestlings. Nestlings' flange colouration was measured with a spectrophotometer before and after being either cleaned of, or painted with, its own uropygial secretion.
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- Animals, particularly birds, use cosmetic substances like uropygial secretions in sexual selection and communication, which may involve pigments produced by symbiotic bacteria.
- The study focuses on the spotless starling nestlings, revealing that the yellow secretion they use to stain their mouths is influenced by the microbiota present, particularly under varying oxidative conditions.
- Results indicate that antioxidant supplementation enhances the complexity and diversity of the microbial community in the secretion, suggesting a connection between bacteria and the coloration of these cosmetic traits.
Article Synopsis
- Animal bacterial symbionts are established early in life through vertical and horizontal transmission, influenced by both physical and social environments, posing challenges in understanding social effects on bacterial communities in wild animals.
- In a study involving Eurasian magpies and great spotted cuckoos, it was found that magpies raised in heterospecific nests had more diverse and richer bacterial communities compared to those in monospecific nests.
- The research highlights how social interactions significantly impact the development of bacterial communities on bird skin, particularly during the nestling period, demonstrating the importance of these interactions in a brood parasite-host relationship.
AbstractThe adaptive value of routinely laying more eggs than can be successfully fledged has intrigued evolutionary biologists for decades. Extra eggs could, for instance, be adaptive as insurance against hatching failures. Moreover, because recent literature demonstrates that sibling cannibalism is frequent in the Eurasian hoopoe (), producing extra offspring that may be cannibalized by older siblings might also be adaptive in birds.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParents might use signals of need or of quality to decide food provisioning among their offspring, while the use of one or another signal might depend on food availability. Begging success of nestlings of different quality (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSymbiotic bacteria on animal hosts can prevent pathogenic bacterial infections by several mechanisms. Among them, symbiotic bacteria can indirectly enhance host's immune responses or, directly, produce antimicrobial substances against pathogens. Due to differences in life-style, different host species are under different risks of microbial infections.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnimal coloration results from pigments, nanostructures, or the cosmetic use of natural products, and plays a central role in social communication. The role of cosmetic coloration has traditionally been focused in scenarios of sexual selection, but it could also take place in other contexts. Here, by using spotless starlings () as a model system, we explore the possibility that nestlings cosmetically use their intensely yellow-colored uropygial secretion to signal their genetic and/or phenotypic quality.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSibling cannibalism is relatively common in nature, but its evolution in birds and certain other vertebrates with extended parental care had been discarded. Here, however, we demonstrate its regular occurrence in two European populations of the Eurasian hoopoe () and explore possible adaptive and non-adaptive explanations. Results showed that sibling cannibalism was more frequently detected in Spain (51.
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