Sunday, November 15, 2009

Random Ecology Question: The Issue of Rock Dove Coloration

Observation: There is an oddly high occurrence of white or primarily white Rock Doves (the pigeon most common to large cities) in Honolulu as compared to any other major city I've traveled to.

This picture is actually a bad example of what I am talking about, probably because i took it as these where basically the only dark pigmented Rock Doves I saw in Honolulu.

Explanation: Either the ancestral Rock Dove invaders were randomly white, or there is an evolutionary advantage to having more white than dark grey feathers. Why do we wear white on sunny days and not black? It keeps us (and possibly Rock Doves alike) from overheating.

Sounds like a paper for "The Journal of the Ecologically Obvious," I know, but this is evolution in real time!

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