ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2018
Macroevolutionary patterning of woodpecker drums reveals how sexual selection elaborates signals under constraint.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 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
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Neck muscle twitch properties are associated with constraint on drum speed in woodpeckers, but not drum length.The Journal of experimental biology · 2025Article
- Contingency, determinism, and constraint in the evolution of elaborate courtship phenotypes.Evolution; international journal of organic evolution · 2025Article
- Social mates dynamically coordinate aggressive behavior to produce strategic territorial defense.PLoS computational biology · 2025Article
- Skewed performance distributions as evidence of motor constraint in sports and animal displays.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Correlated evolution between colour conspicuousness and drum speed in woodpeckers.Royal Society open science · 2022Article
- Forebrain nuclei linked to woodpecker territorial drum displays mirror those that enable vocal learning in songbirds.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- The role of parvalbumin neurons in the evolution of skilled behaviours.PLoS biology · 2022Article
- Evolution of communication signals and information during species radiation.Nature communications · 2020Article
- Non-Vocal Behaviors Are More Frequent During the Decisive Negotiation Phases in Barn Owl Siblings.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2020Article
- Sex Steroids as Regulators of Gestural Communication.Endocrinology · 2020Review
- Comparison of methods for rhythm analysis of complex animals' acoustic signals.PLoS computational biology · 2020Article
- Ecological and geographical overlap drive plumage evolution and mimicry in woodpeckers.Nature communications · 2019Article
- Phenotypic evolution shaped by current enzyme function in the bioluminescent courtship signals of sea fireflies.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2019Article
- Article
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.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sexual selection drives elaboration in animal displays used for competition and courtship, but this process is opposed by morphological constraints on signal design. How do interactions between selection and constraint shape display evolution? One possibility is that sexual selection continues exaggeration under constraint by operating differentially on each signal component in complex, modular displays. This is seldom studied on a phylogenetic scale, but we address the issue herein by studying macroevolutionary patterning of woodpecker drum displays. These territorial displays are produced when an individual rapidly hits its bill on a hard surface, and drums vary across species in the number of beats included (length) and the rate of drumbeat production (speed). We report that species body size limits drum speed, but not drum length. As a result of this biomechanical constraint, there is less standing variation in speed than length. We also uncover a positive relationship between sexual size dimorphism and the unconstrained trait (length), but with no effect on speed. This suggests that when morphology limits the exaggeration of one component, sexual selection instead exaggerates the unconstrained trait. Modular displays therefore provide the basis for selection to find novel routes to phenotypic elaboration after previous ones are closed.
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.