ArticleBiology letters2011
Oxidative damage to DNA related to survivorship and carotenoid-based sexual ornamentation in the common yellowthroat.
Article in Biology letters, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 57 citations in OpenAlex.
- Pooled it
- Hidden palette: culturing the sauropsid gut microbiome reveals a high prevalence and diversity of bacteria that undergo carotenoid biosynthesis.FEMS microbiology ecology · 2026Article
- Carotenoid-based ornaments predict survival in male but not female birds: A meta-analysis.iScience · 2026Article
- Tissue-specific assessment of oxidative status: Wild boar as a case study.Frontiers in veterinary science · 2023Article
- Molecular parallelism in signaling function across different sexually selected ornaments in a warbler.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
- Diversity in warning coloration: selective paradox or the norm?Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2019Review
- Article
- What maintains signal honesty in animal colour displays used in mate choice?Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
- Sexual signals reflect telomere dynamics in a wild bird.Ecology and evolution · 2017Article
- Darwinism for the Genomic Age: Connecting Mutation to Diversification.Frontiers in genetics · 2017Article
- Marker-dependent associations among oxidative stress, growth and survival during early life in a wild mammal.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2016Article
- Relationships between isotopic values and oxidative status: insights from populations of gentoo penguins.Oecologia · 2015Article
- Sex-specific effects of prenatal and postnatal nutritional conditions on the oxidative status of great tit nestlings.Oecologia · 2015Article
- Oxidative stress predicts long-term resight probability and reproductive success in Scopoli's shearwater (Calonectris diomedea).Conservation physiology · 2015Article
- Fluctuations in neighbourhood fertility generate variable signalling effort.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2014Article
- Biomarkers of oxidative status: missing tools in conservation physiology.Conservation physiology · 2014Article
- Article
- Prenatal exposure to testosterone impairs oxidative damage repair efficiency in the domestic chicken (Gallus gallus).Biology letters · 2013Article
- Effects of Endotoxin and Psychological Stress on Redox Physiology, Immunity and Feather Corticosterone in Greenfinches.PloS one · 2013Article
- Integrating oxidative ecology into conservation physiology.Conservation physiology · 2013Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Carotenoid-based sexual ornaments are hypothesized to be reliable signals of male quality, based on an allocation trade-off between the use of carotenoids as pigments and their use in antioxidant defence against reactive oxygen species. Carotenoids appear to be poor antioxidants in vivo, however, and it is not clear whether variation in ornament expression is correlated with measures of oxidative stress (OXS) under natural conditions. We used single-cell gel electrophoresis to assay oxidative damage to erythrocyte DNA in the common yellowthroat (Geothlypis trichas), a sexually dichromatic warbler in which sexual selection favours components of the males' yellow 'bib'. We found that the level of DNA damage sustained by males predicted their overwinter survivorship and was reflected in the quality of their plumage. Males with brighter yellow bibs showed lower levels of DNA damage, both during the year the plumage was sampled (such that yellow brightness signalled current OXS) and during the previous year (such that yellow brightness signalled past OXS). We suggest that carotenoid-based ornaments can convey information about OXS to prospective mates and that further work exploring the proximate mechanism(s) linking OXS to coloration is warranted.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.