Data from: Dressed to impress: breeding plumage as a reliable signal of innate immunity ...
Animal signals involved in sexual selection are often indicators of individual quality. The assumption that sexual characters such as breeding plumage may indicate immune state has rarely been tested in free-living migratory birds, particularly in relation to innate immunity. If sexual characters in...
| Main Authors: | , , , |
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| Format: | Dataset |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Dryad
2018
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://dx.doi.org/10.5061/dryad.m21m300 https://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.m21m300 |
| Summary: | Animal signals involved in sexual selection are often indicators of individual quality. The assumption that sexual characters such as breeding plumage may indicate immune state has rarely been tested in free-living migratory birds, particularly in relation to innate immunity. If sexual characters indeed reflect immune condition, then these could be used to evaluate individual quality. Melanin is a common pigment used in animal communication that mitigates the effects of oxidative stress and has positive effects on energy homeostasis, important functions during the strenuous activity of long-distance flights. However, melanin is also immunosuppressive, and the melanised patches of breeding plumage may to some extent compromise immune responsiveness. We studied melanin-based secondary sexual characters (SSC) in a long-distance migratory wader, the Black-tailed godwit (Limosa limosa), and found that breeding plumage features of male and female godwits are linked to components of innate immunity. Males with a ... : Female_and_Male_Full_DatabaseFull database regarding male and female morphometrics (tarsus length, weight and body condition), innate immunity results (haptoglobin, hemolysis-hemagglutination assay, leukocyte proportions, WBC and H/L index) as well as the melanin-based secondary sexual characters (bars, orange, color extent, bill color, percentage of bill orange color and number of wintering feathers). Columns Cell PC1 and PC2 as well as SSC1, SSC2 and SSC3, result from the PCA analysis done as described on the methods section of this paper.Feather_coloration_RawResults_Females_and_MalesRaw results of spectrophotometric data of breast feather coloration of male and female and feather coloration PCA results. ... |
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