ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2015
The bright incubate at night: sexual dichromatism and adaptive incubation division in an open-nesting shorebird.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 76 citations in OpenAlex.
- Predation Risk Does Not Delay Breeding but Reduces Nest Survival in High-Arctic Shorebirds.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Hyperelongate ornamental tail feathers in a new early Cretaceous enantiornithine bird.PloS one · 2026Article
- Faeces, Feathers and Flight: Understanding of Escape Behaviour in Incubating Eurasian Woodcocks (Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Viewing conditions predict evolutionary diversity in avian plumage colour.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- First Account of the Breeding Biology of Indian Blue Robin (Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2023Article
- Sex differences in avian parental care patterns vary across the breeding cycle.Nature communications · 2023Article
- Oestradiol reduces female bill colour in a mutually ornamented bird.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Diel timing of nest predation changes across breeding season in a subtropical shorebird.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Neoptile feathers contribute to outline concealment of precocial chicks.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Incubating parents serve as visual cues to predators in Kentish plover (Charadrius alexandrinus).PloS one · 2020Article
- Diversity of incubation rhythms in a facultatively uniparental shorebird - the Northern Lapwing.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Nest initiation and flooding in response to season and semi-lunar spring tides in a ground-nesting shorebird.Frontiers in zoology · 2019Article
- Camouflage and Clutch Survival in Plovers and Terns.Scientific reports · 2016Article
- Article
- Geographic variation in breeding system and environment predicts melanin-based plumage ornamentation of male and female Kentish plovers.Behavioral ecology and sociobiologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ornamentation of parents poses a high risk for offspring because it reduces cryptic nest defence. Over a century ago, Wallace proposed that sexual dichromatism enhances crypsis of open-nesting females although subsequent studies found that dichromatism per se is not necessarily adaptive. We tested whether reduced female ornamentation in a sexually dichromatic species reduces the risk of clutch depredation and leads to adaptive parental roles in the red-capped plover Charadrius ruficapillus, a species with biparental incubation. Males had significantly brighter and redder head coloration than females. During daytime, when visually foraging predators are active, colour-matched model males incurred a higher risk of clutch depredation than females, whereas at night there was no difference in depredation risk between sexes. In turn, red-capped plovers maintained a strongly diurnal/nocturnal division of parental care during incubation, with males attending the nest largely at night when visual predators were inactive and females incubating during the day. We found support for Wallace's conclusion that reduced female ornamentation provides a selective advantage when reproductive success is threatened by visually foraging predators. We conclude that predators may alter their prey's parental care patterns and therefore may affect parental cooperation during care.
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