Table 1.

Summary of the statistical models exploring the effect of taxon (carrion vs. hooded crow), body region (head vs. torso) and color (black vs. grey) on normalized gene expression for each of the four target genes seperately. upper part: Factors included in each model are indicated by ‘x’ (e.g. M7: gene expression ~ intercept + taxon + bodyregion + color + |random effect of each section). Akaike’s information criterion (AIC) and difference to the best model (ΔAIC) are shown. The best model is shown in bold on dark grey background; other models with support (ΔAIC≤2) are highlighted in light grey. lower part: Akaike’s weights (wAIC) indicating the relative importance of a factor are shown for each gene.

	Intercept	Taxon	Body region	Color	HPGDS		SLC45A2		TYRP1		MITF
					AIC	ΔAIC	AIC	ΔAIC	AIC	ΔAIC	AIC	ΔAIC
M0	x				723.13	97.20	757.73	89.85	884.62	115.13	559.95	34.30
M1	x	x			686.90	60.97	732.16	64.29	852.75	83.25	554.80	29.15
M2	x		x		689.39	63.45	745.91	78.04	849.98	80.48	549.29	23.64
M3	x			x	627.74	1.80	671.44	3.57	770.82	1.32	529.72	4.07
M4	x	x		x	625.93	0.00	672.47	4.59	769.50	0.00	525.65	0.00
M5	x		x	x	629.65	3.71	671.17	3.30	770.57	1.07	529.52	3.88
M6	x	x	x		671.53	45.59	724.02	56.14	819.84	50.34	543.82	18.17
M7	x	x	x	x	626.97	1.03	667.87	0.00	771.13	1.64	527.65	2.00

wAIC	Taxon	0.74	0.75	0.57	0.83
	Body region	0.35	0.82	0.40	0.31
	Color	1.00	1.00	1.00	1.00