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Coming of age in fringillid birds: heterochrony in the ontogeny of secondary sexual characters

The great variation in the timing of development of adult plumages in North American male passerine birds has in recent years provoked much theoretical interest. It has commonly been assumed that the heterochronic process involved is invariably a retardation of the development of adult plumages. On the basis of a phylogenetic analysis of the nine‐primaried oscines (Fringillidae), I suggest that the heterochronic process that has operated most frequently in North American taxa is not a retardation, but an acceleration. I also suggest that sexual dimorphism in plumage, and late plumage maturation in males, may arise as a secondary result of selection for neoteny in females with a correlated response in males, and not necessarily, as traditionally thought, as a result of selection for bright plumages in males.