Figure 1.

Male house sparrows used in the experiment showing (A) the initial bib just before the beginning of the experiment, (B) the bib after all its feathers and neighboring feathers were plucked in the beginning of the experiment, and (C) the final bib with newly grown feathers at the end of the experiment (taken from Galván et al. 2014a). Note in (A) that, although the predominant color of the bib is that conferred by eumelanin (i.e., black), the coexistence of pheomelanin is also visually appreciated by the presence of some orange feathers at the bottom of the plumage patch.