Stabilizing selection on a plumage-based foraging adaptation: hooded warblers with average-sized white tail spots live longer

<p><span>Avian flush-pursuit insectivores typically use contrasting white plumage patches in their tails or wings to startle potential prey. Although experimental evidence indicates that the extent of white has been fine-tuned by natural selection to optimize foraging performance, the hypothesis that within-population plumage variation directly influences survival or lifetime reproduction and is subject to stabilizing selection has not been tested. Here I provide such a test using data collected as part of a 14-year study of a colour-ringed breeding population of the hooded warbler (<em>Setophaga</em> <em>citrina</em>), a migratory flush-pursuit insectivore that shows inter-individual variation in the extent of white in the tail that is highly repeatable across molts and likely heritable. As expected under stabilizing selection, warblers with average-sized white tail patches achieved significantly higher long-term apparent survival than individuals with either a lesser or greater extent of white in the tail. Evidence of stabilizing selection was especially strong in males, an observation that is likely related to pronounced sexual habitat segregation on the wintering range. My results provide infrequently observed evidence of stabilizing selection operating in a natural population and also illustrate how stabilizing selection can act on avian plumage traits outside the context of sexual and social signaling.</span></p>