Data from: Colours of urban selection: Carotenoid-based signalling is the marker of divergent urban/rural evolutionary trajectories in two closely related passerines, based on reproductive success.

The content of this archive includes data sets, metadata, R scripts, and images associated with the article "The colors of urban selection: carotenoid-based signaling is the marker of divergent urban/rural evolutionary trajectories in two closely related passerine species, based on reproductive success" ( N. Bekka et al. ).

Abstract:

Deep and fast environmental changes are driven by growing urbanization, offering the opportunity to study ongoing eco-evolutionary mechanisms. Urban-driven phenotypic differences are increasingly documented, but the potential role of selection underlying those divergent phenotypes is still poorly understood. Data from 10 years of continuous monitoring of the carotenoid-based breast feathers color of Great tits, Parus major, and Blue tits, Cyanistes caeruleus breeding in urban or rural habitats, showed divergent selection patterns for several reproductive success estimators for both males and females, consistent with the tendency for duller plumage coloration in cities. There was evidence of stabilizing selection for females of both species in the urban area, with a counter-selection of highly colored individuals, never mind we use clutch sizes, number of fledged offspring, and fledging success ratio as reproductive success estimators. This study highlights the possibility of ongoing urban convergent evolutionary pathways followed by two passerine species sharing close ecological niches. That could account for the widely observed duller urban birds’ coloration phenotype. Moreover, for the great tit, we spotlighted duller urban males to make partners of the highest quality for raising nestlings in the city. These patterns may account for synurbanization processes and could reflect urban birds’ adaptation to newly available urban or anthropic resources, with a diet possibly more diverse but with lower carotenoid content.