I found that bird's colorful plumages reflect their needs for foods and enviroments (1 Viewer)

Thank every one who replies this thread. Discusion can make the problem clear.

Their simulation has certain cost of course. We cannot expect 100% or 90% percent accurate. Can you provide better explaination?

fugl said:

This strikes me as an interesting and stimulating idea worthy of further exploration if we can get beyond anecdotes and pretty pictures to some means of testing it.

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Yes, for sure. It is an interesting idea. The paper he has linked to doesn't really take us far though and does rely on pretty pictures and leaps of the imagination.

why would a pheasant want to mimic the patterns on a pine cone when they are not cone feeders?

My answer is that the pheasant likes to eat pine seeds historically.

morninglight said:

why would a pheasant want to mimic the patterns on a pine cone when they are not cone feeders?

My answer is that the pheasant likes to eat pine seeds historically.

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And your evidence is..?

chris butterworth said:

The evolutionary pressures on animals are, at the basal level, always directed at reproduction. .....Chris

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Peancock is the first bird I explained in this way. I get this idea when I read the introduction "They mostly like to eat cherries". Did you see the male peacock trembled its tail in front of the female? I believe it was simulating a cherry tree, such as blue cherry tree, shaken by breeze. If you didn't see, please try to!

knotsbirder:
Pheasants eat pine cones?!
Sam

Morninglight:
They like eating pine seeds.
Beauty sence encourages mans or birds to approach what they like.

Later I will show you that not only good foods but also good enviroments become beatiful for some birds.

Reuven_M:
Some of your examples seem extremely plausible. Sexual selection for red colour seems to be likely in primates as a result of a pre-existing bias for fruithttp://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17853988)
The brightly coloured patches on birds like fruit doves, parrots and waxwings quite possibly have a similar explanation.

On the other hand, some of your other examples seem to have better explanations available. The resemblance of ducks to snail shells seems slim at best. These species are eating a wide variety of prey, and are often foraging by feel without ever getting much visual on their food. The curved patterns on many male ducks could be equally explained by, for example, selection to accentuate the head shape, or an ancestral pattern that has been lost in many species. The latter seems particularly likely to me given the tendency of duck hybrids to show curved head stripes not present in either parent.

Game birds like the ones you posted are wildly variable in their sexual colouration, and by basic probability some of them will come to resemble grains or seeds. Any sexual selection for resemblance to their food would be very difficult to discern from numerous other factors, and cannot be demonstrated just by pointing out similarities.

With the two goldfinches, fairly closely related with similar diets, it seems unlikely that the females would select in different directions if the selection is based on food appearance.

Reuven
__________________
reuvenmartin.blogspot.com


Morninglight:
Yes, you are right, birds' taste for beauty should be evolving together with their color vision. Thank you for the paper you provided.

I am also a researcher of color vision. I built a new mathmatical model for illustrating color blindness and color evolution:


Figure N. Evolution of color vision illustrated by the separations of sensitivity curves

Man with one kind of cones could perceive only two totally different colors: white and black; With W() splitting into B() and Y(), man could gradually discern four totally different colors, blue, yellow, white, and black. With Y() splitting into G() and R(), man could gradually more totally different colors.

Please click to see big picture for gif animation.

Illustration for opponent processing from 3 signals to 8 signals:

The details of the color model
http://survivor99.com/colorforum/model.htm

both color vision and beauty sense are not only from reflection.
Color vision actually is a coded languange which can provides information about objective world. We perceive the world in our way. Fish, bee and other animals may perceive in different way.
Beauty sence is also a language or feedback signal, which tell us some thing good for approach.
Birds' sense organs are closer to Mans than other ainimals perhaps because both of them are interested in fruits and seeds.

The photographs purporting to show the similarity between the King Eider and the member of Viviparidae? The areas in Eastern Siberia and North America that the Eiders breed in only have shallow pools overlying the permafrost and no freshwater molluscan fauna so why would the duck resemble something that it never comes into contact with? As for linking Mandarin Duck with a bivalve. The duck is the eastern ecological counterpart of Wood Duck and it's diet is, similarly, mainly composed of plant material. Yet again I ask, why would a mainly vegetarian duck evolve a feature based on a tiny bit of its diet, and what evolutionary advantage would it gain? I'm afraid you are attempting to link disparate items in order to make them fit your preconceived notions and pass the 'results' off as 'scientific enquiry'.

Chris

morninglight said:

Peancock is the first bird I explained in this way. I get this idea when I read the introduction "They mostly like to eat cherries". Did you see the male peacock trembled its tail in front of the female? I believe it was simulating a cherry tree, such as blue cherry tree, shaken by breeze. If you didn't see, please try to!

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Blue Cherry Tree? Perhaps you could provide the scientific name of this plant? And while you're at it, which Pheasant species are you referring to?

Chris

morninglight said:

..... We perceive the world in our way. Fish, bee and other animals may perceive in different way.

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Then it's perfectly possible that Wood Duck, King Eider, Mandarin Duck, Common Peacock and pheasant perceive molluscs 'Blue Cherry' and pine cones differently and wouldn't this alleged similarity be based on their perception, not yours?

morninglight said:

Birds' sense organs are closer to Mans than other ainimals perhaps because both of them are interested in fruits and seeds.

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Birds, being closer to reptiles than mammals, do not have sense organs that "are closer to Man's than other animals". That closeness is reserved for primates, after all humans are primates.

Chris

Looking at the references at the botton of the paper convinces me that this is an attempt by an arts student to foray into the realm of science. It certainly doesn't look like serious scientific debate and while it might surffice for philosophy or arts courses, it will not be taken seriously in a scientific context. If it wasn't October, I'd have thought this was an April fool's wind up.

Andy Hurley said:

Looking at the references at the botton of the paper convinces me that this is an attempt by an arts student to foray into the realm of science. It certainly doesn't look like serious scientific debate and while it might surffice for philosophy or arts courses, it will not be taken seriously in a scientific context. If it wasn't October, I'd have thought this was an April fool's wind up.

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Complete with irrelevant spectral graphs to provide the "science bit"

Andy Hurley said:

Looking at the references at the botton of the paper convinces me that this is an attempt by an arts student to foray into the realm of science. It certainly doesn't look like serious scientific debate and while it might surffice for philosophy or arts courses, it will not be taken seriously in a scientific context. If it wasn't October, I'd have thought this was an April fool's wind up.

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You do him an injustice. However speculative and poorly documented (though in my view still interesting & thought provoking) his ideas on sexual selection, he's obviously had training as a scientist. Have a look at his website (accessed via the "complete paper" link, post #30) & you'll see what I mean.

I've posted this link before, but I'd guess it's relevant to this topic, as it's doubtful we have any idea of what Birds actually see when it comes to colours:

http://www.bristol.ac.uk/biology/research/behaviour/vision/4d.html

I'd also guess that birds see patterns that we don't. I'm thinking of the test images for Colour Blindness; a person who is colour blind can't see the patterns, so it would be the same for us with the colours birds can see that we can't... wouldn't it?

fugl said:

You do him an injustice. However speculative and poorly documented (though in my view still interesting & thought provoking) his ideas on sexual selection, he's obviously had training as a scientist. Have a look at his website (accessed via the "complete paper" link, post #30) & you'll see what I mean.

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You'd almost think that paper was written by a different person. If it's the same person, there is a huge difference in quality between the two papers.

The notion of a pre-existing bias setting the direction for runaway selection seems entirely feasible, and there are a number of other papers on the subject. The examples and photos given here don't help the case at all in my opinion, and for the reasons given in several posts above.

Mike in Cumbria said:

You'd almost think that paper was written by a different person. If it's the same person, there is a huge difference in quality between the two papers.

The notion of a pre-existing bias setting the direction for runaway selection seems entirely feasible, and there are a number of other papers on the subject. The examples and photos given here don't help the case at all in my opinion, and for the reasons given in several posts above.

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I have to agree on both counts.

As a non-biologist, I was unaware there was a literature on that aspect of the subject so I may have been giving our hero too much credit for originality!