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Being Attractive Brings Advantages: The Case of Parrot Species in Captivity
BACKGROUND: Parrots are one of the most frequently kept and bred bird orders in captivity. This increases poaching and thus the potential importance of captive populations for rescue programmes managed by zoos and related institutions. Both captive breeding and poaching are selective and may be infl...
Autores principales: | , , , |
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Formato: | Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
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Public Library of Science
2010
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Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935353/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20830206 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012568 |
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author | Frynta, Daniel Lišková, Silvie Bültmann, Sebastian Burda, Hynek |
author_facet | Frynta, Daniel Lišková, Silvie Bültmann, Sebastian Burda, Hynek |
author_sort | Frynta, Daniel |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: Parrots are one of the most frequently kept and bred bird orders in captivity. This increases poaching and thus the potential importance of captive populations for rescue programmes managed by zoos and related institutions. Both captive breeding and poaching are selective and may be influenced by the attractiveness of particular species to humans. In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that the size of zoo populations is not only determined by conservation needs, but also by the perceived beauty of individual parrot species assessed by human observers. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: For the purpose of data collection, we defined four sets of species (40 parrots, 367 parrots, 34 amazons, 17 macaws). Then, we asked 776 human respondents to evaluate parrot pictures of the selected species according to perceived beauty and we analyzed its association with color and morphological characters. Irrespective of the species set, we found a good agreement among the respondents. The preferred species tended to be large, colorful, and long-tailed. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We repeatedly confirmed significant, positive association between the perceived beauty and the size of worldwide zoo population. Moreover, the range size and body size appeared to be significant predictors of zoo population size. In contrast, the effects of other explanatory variables, including the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) listing, appeared insignificant. Our results may suggest that zoos preferentially keep beautiful parrots and pay less attention to conservation needs. |
format | Text |
id | pubmed-2935353 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2010 |
publisher | Public Library of Science |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-29353532010-09-09 Being Attractive Brings Advantages: The Case of Parrot Species in Captivity Frynta, Daniel Lišková, Silvie Bültmann, Sebastian Burda, Hynek PLoS One Research Article BACKGROUND: Parrots are one of the most frequently kept and bred bird orders in captivity. This increases poaching and thus the potential importance of captive populations for rescue programmes managed by zoos and related institutions. Both captive breeding and poaching are selective and may be influenced by the attractiveness of particular species to humans. In this paper, we tested the hypothesis that the size of zoo populations is not only determined by conservation needs, but also by the perceived beauty of individual parrot species assessed by human observers. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: For the purpose of data collection, we defined four sets of species (40 parrots, 367 parrots, 34 amazons, 17 macaws). Then, we asked 776 human respondents to evaluate parrot pictures of the selected species according to perceived beauty and we analyzed its association with color and morphological characters. Irrespective of the species set, we found a good agreement among the respondents. The preferred species tended to be large, colorful, and long-tailed. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We repeatedly confirmed significant, positive association between the perceived beauty and the size of worldwide zoo population. Moreover, the range size and body size appeared to be significant predictors of zoo population size. In contrast, the effects of other explanatory variables, including the IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature) listing, appeared insignificant. Our results may suggest that zoos preferentially keep beautiful parrots and pay less attention to conservation needs. Public Library of Science 2010-09-07 /pmc/articles/PMC2935353/ /pubmed/20830206 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012568 Text en Frynta et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited. |
spellingShingle | Research Article Frynta, Daniel Lišková, Silvie Bültmann, Sebastian Burda, Hynek Being Attractive Brings Advantages: The Case of Parrot Species in Captivity |
title | Being Attractive Brings Advantages: The Case of Parrot Species in Captivity |
title_full | Being Attractive Brings Advantages: The Case of Parrot Species in Captivity |
title_fullStr | Being Attractive Brings Advantages: The Case of Parrot Species in Captivity |
title_full_unstemmed | Being Attractive Brings Advantages: The Case of Parrot Species in Captivity |
title_short | Being Attractive Brings Advantages: The Case of Parrot Species in Captivity |
title_sort | being attractive brings advantages: the case of parrot species in captivity |
topic | Research Article |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2935353/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20830206 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0012568 |
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