The chemical basis of a signal of individual identity: shell pigment concentrations track the unique appearance of Common Murre eggs.
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Issue date
2019-04-26Submitted date
2019-05-22Subject Terms
colonialitycoloration
discrimination
individual recognition
egg recognition
maculation
biomaterials
evolution
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Show full item recordAbstract
In group-living species with parental care, the accurate recognition of one's own young is critical to fitness. Because discriminating offspring within a large colonial group may be challenging, progeny of colonial breeders often display familial or individual identity signals to elicit and receive parental provisions from their own parents. For instance, the common murre (or common guillemot: Uria aalge) is a colonially breeding seabird that does not build a nest and lays and incubates an egg with an individually unique appearance. How the shell's physical and chemical properties generate this individual variability in coloration and maculation has not been studied in detail. Here, we quantified two characteristics of the avian-visible appearance of murre eggshells collected from the wild: background coloration spectra and maculation density. As predicted by the individual identity hypothesis, there was no statistical relationship between avian-perceivable shell background coloration and maculation density within the same eggs. In turn, variation in both sets of traits was statistically related to some of their physico-chemical properties, including shell thickness and concentrations of the eggshell pigments biliverdin and protoporphyrin IX. These results illustrate how individually unique eggshell appearances, suitable for identity signalling, can be generated by a small number of structural mechanisms.Citation
Hauber ME, Bond AL, Kouwenberg A-L, Robertson GJ, Hansen ES, Holford M, Dainson M, Luro A, Dale J. 2019 The chemical basis of a signal of individual identity: shell pigment concentrations track the unique appearance of Common Murre eggs. J. R. Soc. Interface 16: 20190115. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2019.0115Publisher
Royal SocietyJournal
J R Soc InterfaceType
Journal ArticleItem Description
& 2019 The Author(s) Published by the Royal Society. All rights reserved. This document is the authors' final accepted version of the journal article. You are advised to consult the published version if you wish to cite from it.EISSN
1742-5662ae974a485f413a2113503eed53cd6c53
10.1098/rsif.2019.0115
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