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Many birds use carotenoids to colour their plumage yellow to red. Because birds cannot synthesise carotenoids, they need to obtain these pigments from food, although some species metabolise dietary carotenoids (which are often yellow) into derived carotenoids (often red).Here, we study the occurrence of yellow and red carotenoid‐based plumage colours in the passerines, the largest bird radiation and quantify the effects of potential ecological and life‐history drivers on their evolution.We scored the presence/absence of yellow and red carotenoid‐based plumage in nearly 6,000 species and use Bayesian phylogenetic mixed models to assess the effects of carotenoid‐availability in diet, primary productivity, body size, habitat and sexual selection. We also test the widespread assumption that red carotenoid‐based colours are more likely to be the result of metabolization. Finally, we analyse the pattern of evolutionary transitions between yellow and red carotenoid‐based plumage colours to determine whether, as predicted, the evolution of yellow carotenoid‐based colours precedes red.We show that, as expected, both colours are more likely to evolve in smaller species and in species with carotenoid‐rich diets. Yellow carotenoid‐based plumage colours, but not red, are more prevalent in species that inhabit environments with higher primary productivity and closed vegetation. In general, females were more likely to have yellow and males more likely to have red carotenoid‐based plumage colours, closely matching the effects of sexual selection. Our analyses also confirm that red carotenoid‐based colours are more likely to be metabolised than yellow carotenoid‐based colours. Evolutionary gains and losses of yellow and red carotenoid‐based plumage colours indicate that red colours evolved more readily in species that already deposited yellow carotenoids, while the reverse was rarely the case.Our study provides evidence for a general, directional evolutionary trend from yellow to red carotenoid‐based colours, which are more likely to be the result of metabolization. This may render them potentially better indicators of quality, and thus favoured by sexual selection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The perceived risk of predation can affect breeding behaviour and reduce reproductive success in prey species. Individuals exposed to predators may also adopt different mating tactics with potential consequences for the distribution of paternity in socially monogamous species that engage in extra‐pair copulations.We experimentally increased perceived predation risk during the fertile period in blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus. Every morning between nest completion and the onset of egg laying, we presented a model of either a predator or a non‐predator (control) near active nestboxes.Broods from pairs exposed to predators had higher levels of extra‐pair paternity than control broods. This mainly resulted from a higher proportion of extra‐pair offspring in broods with at least one extra‐pair young.Females exposed to predators first emerged from the nestbox later in the morning, stayed away from the nestbox for longer and were less likely to be visited at the nest by their social mate, but we detected no behavioural differences once the model was removed.Our results suggest that the higher rates of extra‐pair paternity resulted from the disruption of morning routines, which may have inhibited within‐pair copulations or increased opportunities for females to engage in extra‐pair copulations. We conclude that the perceived risk of predation can have substantial effects on levels of extra‐pair paternity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration and synthesis of the data in different areas of science is drastically slowed and hindered by a lack of standards and networking programmes. Long-term studies of individually marked animals are not an exception. These studies are especially important as instrumental for understanding evolutionary and ecological processes in the wild. Furthermore, their number and global distribution provides a unique opportunity to assess the generality of patterns and to address broad-scale global issues (e.g. climate change). To solve data integration issues and enable a new scale of ecological and evolutionary research based on long-term studies of birds, we have created the SPI-Birds Network and Database (www.spibirds.org)-a large-scale initiative that connects data from, and researchers working on, studies of wild populations of individually recognizable (usually ringed) birds. Within year and a half since the establishment, SPI-Birds has recruited over 120 members, and currently hosts data on almost 1.5 million individual birds collected in 80 populations over 2,000 cumulative years, and counting. SPI-Birds acts as a data hub and a catalogue of studied populations. It prevents data loss, secures easy data finding, use and integration and thus facilitates collaboration and synthesis. We provide community-derived data and meta-data standards and improve data integrity guided by the principles of Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable (FAIR), and aligned with the existing metadata languages (e.g. ecological meta-data language). The encouraging community involvement stems from SPI-Bird's decentralized approach: research groups retain full control over data use and their way of data management, while SPI-Birds creates tailored pipelines to convert each unique data format into a standard format. We outline the lessons learned, so that other communities (e.g. those working on other taxa) can adapt our successful model. Creating community-specific hubs (such as ours, COMADRE for animal demography, etc.) will aid much-needed large-scale ecological data integration., (© 2020 The Authors. Journal of Animal Ecology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Ecological Society.)