SCIENCE@home

Dynamic Status Signal Reflects Outcome of Social Interactions, but Not Energetic Stress

K. A. Tarvin,L. Wong,David C. Lumpkin,Gabrielle M. Schroeder,Dominic D'Andrea,Sophie Meade,Pearl R. Rivers,T. G. Murphy

Published 2016 in Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

ABSTRACT

Social defeat induces stress-responses in a wide array of vertebrates and can generate winner-loser effects. Dynamic condition-dependent signaling systems that reflect preparation for subsequent agonistic interactions, and thereby mediate winner-loser effects, should be more sensitive to competitive history than to non-social sources of stress. Bill color of female American goldfinches (Spinus tristus) is a dynamic condition-dependent ornament that functions as a signal of competitive status and mediates intrasexual agonistic social interactions. We tested the “social experience signaling hypothesis” in female goldfinches by (1) manipulating a non-social energetic stressor by experimentally elevating flight costs via wing-clipping in free-ranging birds, and (2) manipulating social experience by staging competitive interactions among captive birds. Bill color change did not differ between wing clipped and non-clipped females, even though stress-response, as measured by the heterophil to lymphocyte (H:L) ratio, increased significantly in clipped females relative to unclipped females. In contrast, winners and losers in the social experience experiment differed significantly in the degree and direction of bill color change following social contests, with bill color increasing in winners and decreasing in losers. These results suggest that dynamic bill color of female American goldfinches signals recent social history, but is less sensitive to some stressors stemming from non-social sources, and thereby suggest that signals can evolve sensitivity to specific types of processes relevant to the context in which they are used.

PUBLICATION RECORD

  • Publication year

    2016

  • Venue

    Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution

  • Publication date

    2016-06-27

  • Fields of study

    Biology, Environmental Science, Psychology

  • Identifiers
    DOI 10.3389/fevo.2016.00079
  • External record

    Open on Semantic Scholar

  • Source metadata

    Semantic Scholar

CITATION MAP

EXTRACTION MAP

CLAIMS

  • No claims are published for this paper.

CONCEPTS

  • No concepts are published for this paper.

REFERENCES

Showing 1-75 of 75 references · Page 1 of 1

CITED BY

Showing 1-22 of 22 citing papers · Page 1 of 1