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Cited by 287

The DOI matches its Crossref record; 20 of the 20 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Autumn tree colours as a handicap signal

Open access
Hamilton, W. D., Brown, S. P.·2001·Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences
DOI 10.1098/rspb.2001.1672
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Abstract

Many species of deciduous trees display striking colour changes in autumn. Here, we present a functional hypothesis: bright autumn coloration serves as an honest signal of defensive commitment against autumn colonizing insect pests. According to this hypothesis, individuals within a signalling species show variation in the expression of autumn coloration, with defensively committed trees producing a more intense display. Insects are expected to be averse to the brightest tree individuals and, hence, preferentially colonize the least defensive hosts. We predicted that tree species suffering greater insect damage would, on average, invest more in autumn-colour signalling than less troubled species. Here, we show that autumn coloration is stronger in species facing a high diversity of damaging specialist aphids. Aphids are likely to be an important group of signal receivers because they are choosy, damaging and use colour cues in host selection. In the light of further aspects of insect and tree biology, these results support the notion that bright autumn colours are expensive handicap signals revealing the defensive commitment of individual trees to autumn colonizing insect pests.

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Metadata

Authors
Hamilton, W. D., & Brown, S. P.
Venue
Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences
Publisher
The Royal Society
Published
2001-07-22
Volume
268
Issue
1475
Pages
1489-1493
ISSN
  • 0080-4649 (ISSN-L)
  • 0962-8452
  • 1471-2954
DOI
10.1098/rspb.2001.1672
OpenAlex
W2145819413
Cited by
287
References
20
FWCI
19.94
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
green

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Autumn tree colours as a handicap signal. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1098/rspb.2001.1672
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Hamilton, W. D., & Brown, S. P. (2001). Autumn tree colours as a handicap signal. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2001.1672

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

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