ArticleBiology letters2019
Sex in the city: sexual selection and urban colonization in passerines.
Article in Biology letters, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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
8 citing papers in PubMed.
- Habitat Fragmentation in Urbanized Landscapes Favors Bird Species With Darker Plumage.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Bluer in the city: urban male lizards exhibit more intense sexual coloration and lower parasite loads than non-urban males.Integrative zoology · 2025Article
- Life history and nesting traits reflect urban tolerance in coastal birds.Royal Society open science · 2025Article
- Global effects of forest modification on herpetofauna communities.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2023Article
- Nesting Site and Plumage Color Are the Main Traits Associated with Bird Species Presence in Urban Areas.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2022Article
- Diversification Rate is Associated with Rate of Molecular Evolution in Ray-Finned Fish (Actinopterygii).Journal of molecular evolution · 2022Article
- How urbanization affects sexual communication.Ecology and evolution · 2021Review
- Sex in the city: sexual selection and urban colonization in passerines.Biology letters · 2019Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Urbanization leads to a rapid and drastic transformation of habitats, forcing native fauna to manage novel ecological challenges or to move. Sexual selection is a powerful evolutionary force, which is sometimes predicted to enhance the ability of species to adapt to novel environments because it allows females to choose high-quality males, but other times is predicted to reduce the viability of populations because it pushes males beyond naturally selected optima. However, we do not know whether or how sexual selection contributes to the likelihood that animals will establish in urban areas. We use a comparative analysis of passerine birds to test whether traits associated with pre- and post-mating sexual selection predict successful colonization of urban areas. We found that plumage dichromatism was negatively associated with urban tolerance, but found no relationship with sexual size dimorphism or testes mass relative to body mass. While we cannot determine the exact reason why species with high plumage dichromatism occur less in cities, it is likely that urban areas increase the costs of expressing bright coloration due, for instance, to dietary constraints, limited male parental care or increased predation.
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.