September 28, 2026
Biel Macedo — Not All Sexual Monomorphisms Evolve Equally: Female & Male Ornamentation in Tyranni Passerines
Female animals often have ornaments such as conspicuous coloration. However, the evolution of female ornamentation and its contribution to sexual dimorphism are understudied relative to male ornamentation. In this talk, I will show how our research at the Lipshutz Lab addresses this knowledge gap. We investigated the evolution of female and male plumage ornamentation in over 870 species of Tyranni (suboscine) passerines in relation to sociosexual selection, i.e., the differential reproductive success resulting from competition for mates and other socially limited resources (e.g., territories, nest sites). One of our main findings is that females and males show similarly high ornamentation (elaborate monomorphism) in accordance with strong and shared sociosexual selection pressures, for instance in territorial, non-migratory, monogamous species with biparental care, and species nesting in cavities. Our research provides a framework for testing how selective pressures shape both female and male traits, which is key to understanding the evolution of sex differences and similarities.
Speaker Bio: Gabriel (Biel) Macedo is a postdoctoral associate at Duke University in the Lipshutz Lab studying the evolution and genomics of female ornamentation in birds, as well as the transcriptomics of song discrimination in song sparrows. Biel received his PhD in Evolution and Diversity from the Federal University of ABC in Brazil and was a Fulbright visiting researcher at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, studying the evolution of songs, coloration and behavior of females and males of Neotropical birds.
