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Do feather-degrading bacteria actually degrade feather colour? No significant effects of plumage microbiome modifications on feather colouration in wild great tits

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Abstract

Parasites are known to exert selective pressures on host life history traits since the energy and nutrients needed to mount an immune response are no longer available to invest in other functions. Bird feathers harbour numerous microorganisms, some of which are able to degrade feather keratin (keratinolytic microorganisms) and affect feather integrity and colouration in vitro. Although named “feather-degrading” microorganisms, experimental evidence for their effects on feathers of free-living birds is still lacking. Here, we tested whether (i) keratinolytic microorganisms can degrade feathers in vivo and thus modify the colour of feathers during the nesting period and (ii) whether feather microorganisms have a long-term effect on the investment in colouration of newly moulted feathers. We designed treatments to either favour or inhibit bacterial growth, thus experimentally modifying plumage bacterial communities, in a wild breeding population of great tits (Parus major). Our analyses revealed no significant effects of the treatments on feather colours. Moreover, we found that differences in bacterial exposure during nesting did not significantly affect the colouration of newly moulted feathers. Our results suggest that significant feather degradation obtained during in vitro studies could have led to an overestimation of the potential of keratinolytic microorganisms to shape feather colouration in free-living birds.

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Acknowledgements

We wish to dedicate this paper to our invaluable collaborator Léa Colmas who was recently sadly taken by an avalanche. Léa performed an excellent work during this study as part of her master’s. She was greatly appreciated and liked for her warmth, kindness and intellectual abilities and is profoundly missed. We thank the families Bordes, Gers and Labories who allowed us to install nest boxes on their site. Carole Sembeille, Marion Roullin, Marc Etchecopart Echechar and Charlotte Perrot helped during the fieldwork. We thank Mélanie Roy, Jean-Baptiste Ferdy and Pascal Le Bourgeois for discussions and Bob Montgomerie for useful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. This work is part of the Laboratoires d’Excellence (LABEX) entitled TULIP (ANR-10-LABX-41).

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  1. Staffan Jacob

    Present address: Station d’Ecologie Expérimentale du CNRS à Moulis, USR2936, 2 route du CNRS, 09200, Saint-Girons, France

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratoire Évolution et Diversité Biologique (EDB), UMR 5174 Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Ecole Nationale de Formation Agronomique (ENFA)–Université Paul Sabatier, 118 Route de Narbonne, 31062, Toulouse, France

    Staffan Jacob, Léa Colmas, Nathalie Parthuisot & Philipp Heeb

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  1. Staffan Jacob
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Correspondence to Staffan Jacob.

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Communicated by: Alexandre Roulin

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Jacob, S., Colmas, L., Parthuisot, N. et al. Do feather-degrading bacteria actually degrade feather colour? No significant effects of plumage microbiome modifications on feather colouration in wild great tits. Naturwissenschaften 101, 929–938 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-014-1234-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-014-1234-7

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