Fashion in the animal kingdom can be repetitive. There are only a few color templates that scream 'look at me'.
Animals use the same colors for different things.
In strawberry poison-dart frog, the blast of red is a stern warning to stay away.
Two evolutionary biologists, one from Oklahoma State University and the other from the University of Arizona, wondered what made the same colors evolve in different animals.
The common thread connecting each group was found by conducting a study of 1,824 species of land vertebrates.
Birds and lizards are descended from ancestors that were active during the day. The get- lost animals are descended from the dead.
It can be a result of their evolutionary history. Two separate analyses were done, one using their current day-night activity and the other using their ancestral day-night activity.
They found no correlation between the activity of the animals and their color today. It's one that seems to be consistent across all of the tyrannosaurus rex's evolution over the last 350 million years.
It doesn't matter how a species makes the colors. The general pattern of day-night activity still works despite the differences between how a bird and a lizard make red.
According to the analysis done by the researchers, most of the ancestors of the animals they studied were plain and drab, and most of them lived in environments in which their bright colors stood out. The most plausible explanation is that bright colored animals were better able to survive and pass on their genes to their offspring.
The researchers found that the colors of red, orange, yellow, purple, and blue were 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- 888-609- It's not clear what the reason might be.
"For some colors like red, orange, and yellow, they're used with similar frequencies as a way to avoid predators and as a way to find mates," says Emberts.
Blue color was more associated with sex than with avoidance of predatory animals.
It makes sense that a flashy animal is going to be seen by other animals at night. It appears that being able to find a mate and reproduce is more important than not being eaten. The drab females of these species are better able to hide and survive than the males.
In the dark, nocturnal animals prowl around. If the females can't see it, a male snake doesn't have much use for a bright color.
Animals with no eyes have evolved warning colors. It's questionable whether most snakes or salamanders can see colors, so their bright colors are usually used for signaling to predator rather than members of the same species.
The researchers suggest that the coloration may have evolved as a way to tell when a predator is going to attack. Future research could show more details. The team wants to find out if bright colors have changed over time.
The research shows that if you dig into the evolutionary history of the animal, you can find patterns that are no longer current.
The research was published in a journal.
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