Molecules found only in parrots give feathers their vivid colors.
Introduction
When it comes to color, few animals can match the resplendent plumage of parrots. Their feathers span a rainbow of vivid hues.
Color is key to parrots’ survival, offering a means of camouflage and communication. It gives birds the ability to blend into rainforests filled with vibrant flowers, fruits, and berries. It also allows birds to stand out. Brilliant colors signal that a bird is healthy and strong. Parrots assess colors to select mates. They also flash their colors to establish their territory and warn off would-be predators from their nesting areas.
While these display strategies are common in many bird species, parrots get the colors in their feathers in a unique way.
The Strategy
Most birds get colors by depositing s called s into their growing feathers. The birds themselves can’t make carotenoids, rather they acquire them by eating carotenoid-rich foods. Carotenoids put the pink in pink grapefruits and the red in watermelons, for instance, and give carrots, sweet potatoes, mangoes, and corn their orange or yellow hues. Flamingos’ bright pink color comes from beta carotene in the algae or brine shrimp in their diet.
Parrots, however, make their own pigments within their own bodies. All of the more than 350 species of parrots synthesize a unique kind of chemical compound called psittacofulvins. No other animal makes them. Like carotenoids, psittacofulvins are pigments that absorb certain wavelengths of light to produce colors. In parrots, these color-producing compounds are found nowhere else in the birds’ bodies but their feathers.
Psittacofulvins are long-chained molecules linked by 14 to 20 carbon atoms. The handful of different psittacofulvins differ mainly by the number of carbon links in their chains.
The slight chemical differences in psittacofulvins may cause them to absorb wavelengths of light in slightly different ways. But when psittacofulvin molecules are grouped closely together, they can cause the chains of neighboring molecules to bend. These structural shifts create new angles that also may change how the molecules absorb light, so that they appear red, orange, or yellow. In this way, macaws, cockatoos, and parakeets may “tune” the organization of psittacofulvins in their feathers to produce a range of colors, from magenta to lemon. The greater the concentration of psittacofulvins in the feathers, the more intense the color.
Psittacofulvins provide other benefits too. Scientists have found evidence that these molecules even protect feathers from being degraded by bacteria.
Distribution range of the scarlet macaw.
The Potential
Discovering any new chemical compound that performs useful functions gives scientists the potential to examine how it works and find new ways to create innovative products. For example, they can investigate psittacofulvins’ antibacterial abilities for health products, or the molecular traits that give psittacolfulvins their ability to produce an array of stunning colors. Such research could lead to novel materials to manipulate light and color, microscale optical devices, or even new designs for optical computing.
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