ArticlePhilosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences2017
Coevolution of coloration and colour vision?
Article in Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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
17 citing papers in PubMed, 54 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Visual Ecology ofAnimals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Review
- Implications From the Analogous Relationship Between Evolutionary and Learning Processes.BioEssays : news and reviews in molecular, cellular and developmental biology · 2025Review
- Hidden white and black feather layers enhance plumage coloration in tanagers and other songbirds.Science advances · 2025Article
- Opsin gene expression plasticity and spectral sensitivity in male damselflies could mediate female colour morph detection.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Red vision in animals is broadly associated with lighting environment but not types of visual task.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- The carotenoid redshift: Physical basis and implications for visual signaling.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Colour Variation in the Crocodile Lizard (Biology · 2022Article
- Deep learning image segmentation reveals patterns of UV reflectance evolution in passerine birds.Nature communications · 2022Article
- Patterns of variations in dorsal colouration of the Italian wall lizard Podarcis siculus.Biology open · 2021Article
- Variability, heritability and condition-dependence of the multidimensional male colour phenotype in a passerine bird.Heredity · 2021Article
- The evolution of red color vision is linked to coordinated rhodopsin tuning in lycaenid butterflies.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2021Article
- Conserved visual sensitivities across divergent lizard lineages that differ in an ultraviolet sexual signal.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- Comparative analyses identify genomic features potentially involved in the evolution of birds-of-paradise.GigaScience · 2019Article
- How do complex animal signals evolve?PLoS biology · 2018Article
- Opsin expression predicts male nuptial color in threespine stickleback.Ecology and evolution · 2018Article
- Living Light 2018: Conference Report.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018Article
- The current and future state of animal coloration research.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2017Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The evolutionary relationship between signals and animal senses has broad significance, with potential consequences for speciation, and for the efficacy and honesty of biological communication. Here we outline current understanding of the diversity of colour vision in two contrasting groups: the phylogenetically conservative birds, and the more variable butterflies. Evidence for coevolution of colour signals and vision exists in both groups, but is limited to observations of phenotypic differences between visual systems, which might be correlated with coloration. Here, to illustrate how one might interpret the evolutionary significance of such differences, we used colour vision modelling based on an avian eye to evaluate the effects of variation in three key characters: photoreceptor spectral sensitivity, oil droplet pigmentation and the proportions of different photoreceptor types. The models predict that physiologically realistic changes in any one character will have little effect, but complementary shifts in all three can substantially affect discriminability of three types of natural spectra. These observations about the adaptive landscape of colour vision may help to explain the general conservatism of photoreceptor spectral sensitivities in birds. This approach can be extended to other types of eye and spectra to inform future work on coevolution of coloration and colour vision.This article is part of the themed issue 'Animal coloration: production, perception, function and application'.
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.