Meeting Abstract
Color plays an important role in animal signaling and sexual selection, and as such is frequently used as a metric for identifying homotypic and heterotypic populations. However, quantifying color differences among individuals or populations can be challenging. Historic techniques for quantifying color rely on the visual system of the observer, and therefore are biased, difficult to evaluate statistically, and not necessarily applicable to the behavior of the animal. An excellent tool for eliminating these biases has been the use of spectrophotometers. However, spectrophotometers work best on uniform patches of color, quantify only a small portion of the body at once, and can perform poorly when the area of interest is highly patterned. We developed a standardized digital photography method that allowed us to quantify differences in highly patterned plumage of phenotypically variable populations of songbirds quickly and account for color and patterning of the entire body of the bird. This method is quantifiable, repeatable, lends itself to statistical analysis, and is independent of observer visual bias.
