Meeting Abstract
Ornamental traits remain honest indicators of fitness if there is a direct cost to producing or maintaining the trait or if a tradeoff between ornamentation and other physiological processes exists. In addition to regulating physiology, hormones control behavior; thus phenotype, physiology and behavior are linked by hormone levels. In birds, plumage color is often an honest indicator of social status, and hormones are known to influence plumage color, providing a mechanism by which dominance signals and behaviors may be linked. Previous work on Florida scrub-jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens) demonstrated that experimental reductions of plumage reflectance induced a decrease in social dominance, but the mechanism underlying this effect is unknown. Here, we test the hypothesis that the decrease in dominance is due to changes in levels of corticosterone or testosterone and present data supporting the role of corticosterone mediating the effect of plumage manipulation on behavior.
