Keith comments on new Science article about: Why are parrots so colorful? Study points to simple chemical tweak
Keith recently contributed to a discussion about a paper in Science about parrot feather colors. The Gordon group did some work in this area. We used resonance Raman spectroscopy to establish the frequency dispersion of the dyes, called psittacofulvins (R.Soc.Open Sci. 5 (2018) 172010 and Spectrochimica Acta Part A: Molecular and Biomolecular Spectroscopy 262 (2021) 120146) , being able to characterize their electronic structure. The Science paper (Roberto Arbore et al. A molecular mechanism for bright color variation in parrots.Science386,eadp7710(2024).DOI:10.1126/science.adp7710) goes beyond that in mapping out the genetics of the differing species and relating that back to the color. Very simple oxidative mechanisms are used to change pigment color.
Data from R.Soc.Open Sci. 5 (2018) 172010
