Eggshell colour is more strongly affected by maternal identity than by dietary antioxidants in a captive poultry system

1.Biologists have long puzzled over the apparent conspicuousness of blue-green eggshell coloration in birds. One candidate explanation is the sexual signalling hypothesis that the blue-green colour of eggshells can reveal an intrinsic aspect of females' physiological quality, with only high-quality females having sufficient antioxidant capacity to pigment their eggs with large amounts of biliverdin. Subsequent work has argued instead that eggshell colour might signal condition-dependent traits based on diet. 2.Using Araucana chickens that lay blue-green eggs, we explored (i) whether high levels of dietary antioxidants yield eggshells with greater blue-green reflectance, (ii) whether females differ from one another in eggshell coloration despite standardized environments, diets and rearing conditions, and (iii) the relative strength with which diet vs. female identity affects eggshell coloration. 3.We reared birds to maturity and then placed them on either a high- or low-antioxidant diet, differing fourfold in Vitamin E acetate and Vitamin A retinol. After 8 weeks, the treatments were reversed, such that females laid eggs on both diets in an order-balanced design. We measured the reflectance spectra of 545 eggs from 25 females. 4.Diet had a very limited effect on eggshell spectral reflectance, but individual females differed strongly and consistently from one another, despite having been reared under uniform conditions. However, predictions from avian visual modelling suggest that most of the egg colour differences between females, and nearly all of the differences between diets, are unlikely to be visually discriminable. 5.Our data suggest that eggshell reflectance spectra may carry information on intrinsic properties of the female that laid the eggs, but the utility of this coloration as a signal to conspecifics in this species may be limited by the sensitivity of a receiver to detect it.

The role of olfactory cues in the sequential radiation of a gall-boring beetle, Mordellistena convicta

1. Herbivorous insects often have close associations with specific host plants, and their preferences for mating and ovipositing on a specific host-plant species can reproductively isolate populations, facilitating ecological speciation. Volatile emissions from host plants can play a major role in assisting herbivores to locate their natal host plants and thus facilitate assortative mating and host-specific oviposition. 2. The present study investigated the role of host-plant volatiles in host fidelity and oviposition preference of the gall-boring, inquiline beetle, Mordellistena convicta LeConte (Coleoptera: Mordellidae), using Y-tube olfactometers. Previous studies suggest that the gall-boring beetle is undergoing sequential host-associated divergence by utilising the resources that are created by the diverging populations of the gall fly, Eurosta solidaginis Fitch (Diptera: Tephritidae), which induces galls on the stems of goldenrods including Solidago altissima L. (Asteraceae) and Solidago gigantea Ait. 3. Our results show that M. convicta adults are attracted to galls on their natal host plant, avoid the alternate host galls, and do not respond to volatile emissions from their host-plant stems. 4. These findings suggest that the gall-boring beetles can orient to the volatile chemicals from host galls, and that beetles can use them to identify suitable sites for mating and/or oviposition. Host-associated mating and oviposition likely play a role in the sequential radiation of the gall-boring beetle.

The Role of Olfactory Cues in the Sequential Radiation of a Gall-boring Beetle, Mordellistena convicta

1. Herbivorous insects often have close associations with specific host plants, and their preferences for mating and ovipositing on a specific host-plant species can reproductively isolate populations, facilitating ecological speciation. Volatile emissions from host plants can play a major role in assisting herbivores to locate their natal host plants and thus facilitate assortative mating and host-specific oviposition. 2. The present study investigated the role of host-plant volatiles in host fidelity and oviposition preference of the gall-boring, inquiline beetle, Mordellistena convicta LeConte (Coleoptera: Mordellidae), using Y-tube olfactometers. Previous studies suggest that the gall-boring beetle is undergoing sequential host-associated divergence by utilising the resources that are created by the diverging populations of the gall fly, Eurosta solidaginis Fitch (Diptera: Tephritidae), which induces galls on the stems of goldenrods including Solidago altissima L. (Asteraceae) and Solidago gigantea Ait. 3. Our results show that M. convicta adults are attracted to galls on their natal host plant, avoid the alternate host galls, and do not respond to volatile emissions from their host-plant stems. 4. These findings suggest that the gall-boring beetles can orient to the volatile chemicals from host galls, and that beetles can use them to identify suitable sites for mating and/or oviposition. Host-associated mating and oviposition likely play a role in the sequential radiation of the gall-boring beetle.

The role of olfactory cues in the sequential radiation of a gall-boring beetle

Species diversity itself may cause additional species diversity. According to recent findings, some species modify their environment in such a way that they facilitate the creation of new niches for other species to evolve to fill. Given the vast speciesdiversity of insects, the occurrence of such sequential radiation of species is likely common among herbivorous insects and the species that depend on them, many of them being insects as well. Herbivorous insects often have close associations with specific host plants and their preferences for mating and ovipositing on a specific host-plant species can reproductively isolate host-specific populations, facilitating speciation. Previous research by our laboratory has established that there are two distinct populations of thegall fly, Eurosta solidaginis (Tephritidae), which attack different species of goldenrods, Solidago altissima (Asteraceae) and S. gigantea. The gall fly’s host-associated differentiation is facilitating the divergence and potential speciation of twosubpopulations of the gall-boring beetle Mordellistena convicta (Mordellidae) by providing new resources (galls on stems of the galdenrods) for the gall-boring beetles. These beetles exist as two host-plant associated populations of inquilines that inhabit the galls induced by the gall fly. While our previous research has provided genetic and behavioral evidence for host-race formation, little is known about the role of their host plants in assortative mating and oviposition-site selection of the gall-boring beetles’ hostassociated populations. Volatile emissions from host plants can play a major role in assisting herbivores to locate their natal host plants and thus facilitate assortative mating and host-specific oviposition. The present study investigated the role of host-plant volatiles in host fidelity (mating on the host plant) and oviposition preference of M. convicta by measuring its behavioral responses to the host-plant volatile emissions using Y-tube olfactometers. In total, we tested behavioral responses of 615 beetles. Our resultsshow that M. convicta adults are attracted to their natal host galls (67% of S. altissima-emerging beetles and 70% of S. gigantea-emerging beetles) and avoid the alternate host galls (75% of S. altissima-emerging beetles and 66% of S. gigantea-emerging beetles),while showing no preference for, or avoidance of, ungalled plants from either species. This suggests that the gall beetles can orient to the volatile chemicals emitted by the galls and can potentially use them to identify suitable sites for mating and/or oviposition. Thus, host-associated mating and oviposition may play a role in the sequential speciation of the gall-boring beetle.

Use Of Conspecific Gestural Cues To Solve An Object-Choice Task In Tufted Capuchin Monkeys (Cebus Apella)

Capuchin monkeys, Cebus sp., utilize a wide array of gestural displays in the wild, including facial displays such as lip-smacking and bare-teeth displays. In captivity, they have been shown to respond to the head orientation of humans, show sensitivity to human attentional states, as well as follow human gazes behind barriers. In this study, I investigated whether tufted capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella) would attend to and utilize the gestural cues of a conspecific to obtain a hidden reward. Two capuchins faced each other in separate compartments of an apparatus with an open field in between. The open field contained two cups with holes on one side such that only one monkey, a so-called cuing monkey, could see the reward inside one of the cups. I then moved the cups toward the other signal-receiving monkey and assessed whether it would utilize untrained cues provided by the cuing monkey to select the cup containing the reward. Two of four female capuchin monkeys learned to select the cup containing the reward significantly more often than chance. Neither of these two monkeys performed over chance spontaneously, however, and the other two monkeys never performed above chance despite many blocks of trials. Successful choices by two monkeys to obtain hidden rewards provided experimental evidence that capuchin monkeys attend to and utilize the gestural cues of conspecifics.

Visual Speech Segmentation: Using Facial Cues to Locate Word Boundaries in Continuous Speech

Speech is typically a multimodal phenomenon, yet few studies have focused on the exclusive contributions of visual cues to language acquisition. To address this gap, we investigated whether visual prosodic information can facilitate speech segmentation. Previous research has demonstrated that language learners can use lexical stress and pitch cues to segment speech and that learners can extract this information from talking faces. Thus, we created an artificial speech stream that contained minimal segmentation cues and paired it with two synchronous facial displays in which visual prosody was either informative or uninformative for identifying word boundaries. Across three familiarisation conditions (audio stream alone, facial streams alone, and paired audiovisual), learning occurred only when the facial displays were informative to word boundaries, suggesting that facial cues can help learners solve the early challenges of language acquisition.