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The books are listed by publication date with the most recent at the top.

Concealing Coloration in Animals

Judy Diamond, Alan B. Bond

2013

"The biological functions of coloration in animals are sometimes surprising. Color can attract mates, intimidate enemies, and distract predators. But color patterns can also conceal animals from detection. Concealing coloration is unusual because it is an adaptation not only to the visual features of the environment but also to the perceptual and cognitive capabilities of other organisms. Judy Diamond and Alan Bond bring to light the many factors at work in the evolution of concealing coloration. Animals that resemble twigs, tree bark, stones, and seaweed may appear to be perfect imitations, but no concealment strategy is without flaws. Amid the clutter of the natural world, predators search for minute, telltale clues that will reveal the identity of their prey. Predators have remarkable abilities to learn to discriminate the fake from the real. But prey have their own range of defensive tactics, evolving multiple appearances or the ability to change color at will. Drawing on modern experimental evidence of the functional significance of animal color strategies, Diamond and Bond offer striking illustrations of how the evolution of features in one organism can be driven by the psychology of others. Concealing Coloration in Animals takes readers on a scientific adventure that explores creatures inside mats of floating seaweed, mice and lizards on desert rocks and sand, and rare parrots in the rainforest of New Zealand."

Bird Coloration

Geoffrey E. Hill

2010

"This volume's gorgeous pictures and lively explanations will captivate beginners as well as serious twitchers. Author and noted ornithologist Geoff Hill takes readers on an informative visual and narrative tour. Seventeen short chapters with engaging narrative and lots of photos with information-packed captions illustrate the mechanisms by which birds produce the characteristic and sometimes brilliant colouration of their feathers and other body parts. Why is a cardinal red or a bluebird blue? Why do some birds have plumage that is intensely coloured - is it pigment, light, gender, or simple good health? What roles do disease, heat, wear and tear, and other factors play in this process? What does feather display signal about sexual attraction and social status? How has colour camouflage evolved? It looks at the function of ornamental colouration and at how birds' signaling attracts mates and deters competitors. It gives answers to common questions such as why a male peacock makes its stunning tail displays and why a juvenile Roseate Spoonbill has colouration different from either parent."

Bird Coloration, Volume 1: Mechanisms and Measurements

Editors: Geoffrey E Hill and Kevin J McGraw

2006

"Geoffrey Hill and Kevin McGraw have assembled the world's leading experts in perception, measurement, and control of bird coloration to contribute to this book. This sumptuously illustrated volume synthesizes more than 1,500 technical papers in this field. The focus is on the three primary mechanisms of color production - melanin pigmentation, carotenoid pigmentation, and structural coloration - but less common as well as newly described mechanisms of color production are also reviewed in detail. The visual perception of birds and the best ways to collect and analyze color data are, for the first time, presented as part of the review of mechanisms of coloration."

Bird Coloration, Volume 2: Function and Evolution

Editors: Geoffrey E Hill and Kevin J McGraw

2006

"In Volume 2, the authors turn from the problem of how birds see and produce colour and how researchers measure it, to what is the function of the colourful displays of birds and what are the factors that shape the evolution of colour signals. The contributors to this volume begin by examining the function of coloration in a variety of contexts from mate choice, to social signalling, to individual recognition, synthesizing a vast amount of recent findings by researchers around the world. The volume and the series conclude with chapters that consider coloration from an explicitly evolutionary perspective, examining selective pressures that have led to the evolution of colours and patterns on body and plumage. These functional and evolutionary studies build from research on mechanisms of production and controls of expression, covered in the previous volume, bringing the study of colour full circle."

A Red Bird in a Brown Bag: The Function and Evolution of Colorful Plumage in the House Finch

Geoffrey E. Hill

2002

"This is an account of studies of the function and evolution of colorful plumage in the House Finch. It is also an engaging study on the evolution of sexual selection in birds and a lively portrait of the challenges and constraints of experimental design facing any field investigator working with animal behavior. Part I sets the stage for modern studies of the function of plumage coloration with a review of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries. Part II focuses on the proximate control and present function of plumage coloration. Part III takes a more explicitly evolutionary approach to the study of plumage coloration using biogeography and phylogeny to test hypotheses for why specific forms of plumage color display have evolved. It concludes with an account of comparative studies that have been conducted in the House Finch and other cardueline finches and the insight these studies have provided on the evolution of carotenoid-based ornamental coloration."