Manceau Lab

Research focus

ERC Advanced Grant · 2023

Embryonic control of trends and variation in avian colour patterns

Most animals display striking patterns (i.e., spatial arrangement of characters in typical geometries). Natural patterns vary extensively, but also display trends within given taxa. A major biological challenge is to identify the pattern-forming events that shape this typical phenotypic landscape. Here, we propose to study the mechanisms responsible for the formation and evolution of the avian colour pattern (i.e., the spatial distribution of colour across the plumage). We test the provocative idea that despite enormous apparent diversity, variation in avian colour patterns is in fact very limited due to early developmental constraints, most variation resulting from colour choice changes in…

From the public funding record at EU CORDIS. Describes the funded project, not the reviews below.