For sunbirds, all that shimmers is piping hot.
The birds’ flashy, iridescent feathers heat up more than other types of feathers, possibly making it harder to stay cool in hot, sunny conditions. If so, the colorful plumes may be costly ornaments for luring mates, researchers report August 4 in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
Many studies on the thermal properties of animal color have previously focused on differences between how dark and light colors derived from pigments react to light and heat, says Svana Rogalla, a biophysicist at the Biofisika Institute in Bilbao, Spain. Less attention has been paid to how heat interacts with structural color — often
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