ArticleNature ecology & evolution2022
Latitudinal gradients in avian colourfulness.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 28 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
28 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Evolutionary drivers of sex-specific parasite prevalence in wild birds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Pooled it
- The link between colorfulness and extinction risk across the world's passerine birds.Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology · 2026Article
- Host Traits and Avian Malaria Parasites: Understanding the Intrinsic Connections.Integrative zoology · 2026Article
- Bird Community Colours Across Different Types of Habitat.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Evidence for the evolution of male and female cardinals' plumage colouration being affected by both natural and sexual selection.BMC ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Iridescent structural coloration in a crested Cretaceous enantiornithine bird from the Jehol Biota.eLife · 2025Article
- Pigment contribution to feather mass depends on melanin form and is restricted to approximately 25.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Hidden white and black feather layers enhance plumage coloration in tanagers and other songbirds.Science advances · 2025Article
- Global patterns of colouration complexity in the Paridae: Effects of climate and species characteristics across body regions.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- Gloger's Rule or Historical Conjecture? Tests in Mammals.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Climate underpins continent-wide patterns of carotenoid-based feather colour consistent with Gloger's observations.The Journal of animal ecology · 2025Article
- CytoSimplex: visualizing single-cell fates and transitions on a simplex.Bioinformatics (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Variation in Plumage Coloration of Rosy-Faced Lovebirds (Agapornis roseicollis): Links to Sex, Age, Nutritional Condition, Viral Infection, and Habitat Urbanization.Journal of experimental zoology. Part A, Ecological and integrative physiology · 2025Article
- Article
- Climate and ecology predict latitudinal trends in sexual selection inferred from avian mating systems.PLoS biology · 2024Article
- Global analysis of acoustic frequency characteristics in birds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The Last Universal Common Ancestor of Ribosome-Encoding Organisms: Portrait of LUCA.Journal of molecular evolution · 2024Review
- Combining Molecular, Macroevolutionary, and Macroecological Perspectives on the Generation of Diversity.Cold Spring Harbor perspectives in biology · 2024Review
- Transitions between colour mechanisms affect speciation dynamics and range distributions of birds.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Analysing biological colour patterns from digital images: An introduction to the current toolbox.Ecology and evolution · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It has long been suggested that tropical species are generally more colourful than temperate species, but whether latitudinal gradients in organismal colourfulness exist remains controversial. Here we quantify global latitudinal trends in colourfulness (within-individual colour diversity) by collating and analysing a photographic dataset of whole-body plumage reflectance information for >4,500 species of passerine birds. We show that male and female birds of tropical passerine species are generally more colourful than their temperate counterparts, both on average and in the extreme. We also show that these geographic gradients can be explained in part by the effects of several latitude-related factors related to classic hypotheses for climatic and ecological determinants of organismal colourfulness. Taken together, our results reveal that species' colourfulness peaks in the tropics for passerine birds, confirming the existence of a long-suspected yet hitherto elusive trend in the distribution of global biodiversity.
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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.