BACKGROUND The interdisciplinary field of animal coloration is growing rapidly, spanning
questions about the diverse ways that animals use pigments and structures to generate …

Carotenoids are natural isoprenoid pigments that provide leaves, fruits, vegetables and
flowers with distinctive yellow, orange and some reddish colours as well as several aromas …

Trade-offs and constraints are inherent to life, and studies of these phenomena play a
central role in both organismal and evolutionary biology. Trade-offs can be defined …

1. Bacterial symbionts play a prominent role in insect nutritional ecology by aiding in
digestion of food or providing nutrients that are limited or lacking in the diet. Thereby …

Carotenoids are colored compounds produced by plants, fungi, and microorganisms and
are required in the diet of most animals for oxidation control or light detection. Pea aphids …

Symbiotic microbes have become increasingly recognized to mediate interactions between
natural enemies and their hosts. The ecologies of these symbioses, however, are poorly …

Color variation within populations of the pea aphid influences relative susceptibility to
predators and parasites. We have discovered that infection with a facultative endosymbiont …

Natural enemies are important ecological and evolutionary forces, and heritable variation in
resistance to enemies is a prerequisite for adaptive responses of populations. Such variation …

The hypothesis that ornaments can honestly signal quality only if their expression is
condition-dependent has dominated the study of the evolution and function of colour traits …

The suppression of agricultural pests has often been proposed as an important service of
natural enemy diversity, but few experiments have tested this assertion. In this study we …