ArticlePloS one2018
Avian learning favors colorful, not bright, signals.
Article in PloS one, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 9 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
9 citing papers in PubMed.
- Untangling Colour Diversity: Ecogeographic Patterns in TwoEcology and evolution · 2026Article
- In paired preference tests, domestic chicks innately choose the colour green over red, and the shape of a frog over a sphere when both stimuli are green.Animal cognition · 2023Article
- The evolution of conspicuousness in frogs: When to signal toxicity?Journal of evolutionary biology · 2022Article
- The influence of ultraviolet reflectance differs between conspicuous aposematic signals in neotropical butterflies and poison frogs.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Article
- Ultraviolet components offer minimal contrast enhancement to an aposematic signal.Ecology and evolution · 2020Article
- Weak warning signals can persist in the absence of gene flow.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2019Article
- Interactions between color and gloss in iridescent camouflage.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- Biologically inspired warning patterns deter a passerine,Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
A few colors, such as red and yellow, are commonly found in aposematic (warning) signaling across taxa, independent of evolutionary relationships. These colors have unique traits (i.e., hue, brightness) that aid in their differentiation, and perhaps, their effectiveness in promoting avoidance learning. This repeated use calls into question the influence of selection on specific warning colors adopted by aposematic prey-predator systems. To disentangle the influence of color characteristics on this process, we trained week-old chickens (Gallus gallus domesticus) to learn to avoid distasteful food that was associated with one of three color signals (yellow, white, red) that varied in both hue and in brightness in order to assess which of these traits most influenced their ability to learn avoidance. Our results show that while chicks learned to avoid all three colors, avoidance was based on the hue, not brightness of the different signals. We found that yellow was the most effective for avoidance learning, followed by red, and finally white. Our results suggest that while these three colors are commonly used in aposematic signaling, predators' ability to learn avoidance differs among them. These results may explain why yellow is among the most common signals across aposematic taxa.
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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.