Parrots' brightly coloured feathers are not only useful for visual signalling, but also protect against microbial damage.
Edward Burtt Jr at Ohio Wesleyan University in Delaware and his colleagues exposed parrot feathers of varying colours and species to Bacillus licheniformis, a feather-degrading bacteria, over a five-day period.
They found that white feathers degraded the most rapidly. Yellow feathers, which contain low levels of psittacofulvin, a pigment that is resistant to bacterial breakdown and found only in parrots, came a close second.
Red feathers, which contain higher levels of psittacofulvins, and blue, green and black feathers, which all contain melanin, broke down much more slowly.
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Evolutionary biology: Colourful bacterial resistance. Nature 467, 754 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/467754a
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/467754a
