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Fig. 5 | BMC Evolutionary Biology

Fig. 5

From: Macroevolutionary bursts and constraints generate a rainbow in a clade of tropical birds

Fig. 5

Visualization of ancestral reconstruction of plumage mechanism and color shows conservation of wing color as green and greater variability in face and breast patches. Top row represents ancestral reconstructions of plumage mechanism for two exemplar patches, the Lores (a) and the Secondaries (b). Overall, pigment was usually present but structural color fluctuated. c represents a continuous character ancestral reconstruction of color for all patches at the basal node to all lorikeets. Note the lighter-reddish-colored underside countershading to the dark green dorsal wings and back, which are conserved across deep nodes and found in most extant lorikeets. Ancestral states were estimated using models from the grouped patch analysis. d represents an example of continuous ancestral reconstruction of a single patch (the lesser coverts) with an arrow pointing to the node from which ancestral states were extracted for each patch. While the colors in (d) were approximated based on a single PC axis, the ancestral colors reported in (c) were calculated based on RGB and UV reflectance simultaneously

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