| hematozoa of the avian family philepittidae (the asities and sunbird asities). | blood smears from birds in the philepittidae, endemic to madagascar, were examined for the presence of hematozoa. all slides were read on a compound microscope at x100, x160, and x1000. to date, no species of avian hematozoa has been reported from asities in madagascar, although parasites have been observed. leucocytozoon greineri n. sp. is described from the common sunbird asity (neodrepanis coruscans) and is also reported from the velvet asity (philepitta castanea). it is a relatively small sp ... | 2004 | 15715246 |
| structural colouration of avian skin: convergent evolution of coherently scattering dermal collagen arrays. | structural colours of avian skin have long been hypothesized to be produced by incoherent (rayleigh/tyndall) scattering. we investigated the colour, anatomy, nanostructure and biophysics of structurally coloured skin, ramphotheca and podotheca from 31 species of birds from 17 families in 10 orders from across aves. integumentary structural colours of birds include ultraviolet, dark blue, light blue, green and yellow hues. the discrete peaks in reflectance spectra do not conform to the inverse fo ... | 2003 | 12796458 |
| coherent light scattering by nanostructured collagen arrays in the caruncles of the malagasy asities (eurylaimidae: aves) | we investigated the anatomy, nanostructure and biophysics of the structurally coloured facial caruncles of three species in a clade of birds endemic to madagascar (philepittinae, eurylaimidae: aves). caruncle tissues of all species had reflectance spectra with prominent, peak hues between 403 and 528 nm. dark blue neodrepanis tissues had substantial reflectance in the near ultraviolet (320-400 nm), which is visible to birds but not to humans, providing the first evidence of ultraviolet skin colo ... | 1999 | 10574729 |
| structural color production by constructive reflection from ordered collagen arrays in a bird (philepitta castanea: eurylaimidae). | ordered hexagonal arrays of parallel collagen fibers produce the brilliant green structural color of the fleshy, supraorbital caruncles of male velvet asity (philepitta castanea; aves: eurylaimidae). the collagen arrays are organized in larger macrofibrils that are packed irregularly within cone-shaped papillae that cover the surface of the caruncle. the color of the caruncle conforms closely to the wavelengths predicted by applying bragg's law of constructive reflection to measurements of the s ... | 1994 | 29865414 |