Flight initiation distance differs among eumelanin-based color morphs in feral pigeons

Organisms facing anthropogenic activities usually exhibit phenotypic responses assumed to enhance coping with disturbance. These responses include a decreasing degree of reaction toward potentially risky situations (“behavioral tolerance”) with increasing disturbance. Though melanin is associated with many phenotypic traits, including pigmentation and behavior, the potential relationship between behavioral tolerance and melanin has never been explored. Such relationship may potentially result from either direct association between melanin and behavior (e.g., genetic correlation) or indirectly through a coloration-dependent behavior-modulating factor (e.g., differential predation or human preferences in cities toward color morphs). Feral pigeons (Columba livia) represent an ideal biological system to test for these hypotheses, due to their presence in cities worldwide, their considerable variation in eumelanin-based coloration, ranging from white to black plumage, and their close proximity to humans. We measured Flight Initiation Distance (FID, classically used for behavioral tolerance assessment) of feral pigeons of 4 different eumelanin-based color morphs in sites differing in their urbanization rate and pedestrian traffic within the restricted scale of a city center (Paris). Urbanization rate and pedestrian traffic had no effect on FID, maybe because of the small spatial scale considered. FID varied with eumelanin-based coloration: white pigeons had lower FID (104.6 cm; i.e., higher behavioral tolerance) than darker morphs (232.3 cm for Blue bar, 184.4 cm for T-pattern & Checker, and 181.8 cm for Spread color morphs). Though the exact underlying causes remain to be identified, we propose different possible mechanisms for this relationship that remain to be investigated in future work.