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Published online 13 March 2001 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news010315-5
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Sex drives birds apart
Promiscuity makes females dull and males flashy.
New evidence from more than 1,000 of the world's bird species backs up Charles Darwin's theory that male birds tend to be bigger, brighter and more colourful than females because of their differing approaches to sex1.
Peter Dunn of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and his colleagues collected bird size and plumage data from the scientific literature and from 12 museums around the world.
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