Melanin chemistry and the ecology of stress

Abstract

Knowledge of melanin chemistry has important implications for the study of the evolutionary ecology of animal pigmentation, but the actual chemical diversity of these widely expressed biological pigments has been largely overlooked. Considering all melanin forms and the different conditions of endogenous oxidative stress during their synthesis provides information about physiological costs and benefits of different pigmentation patterns and opens a new perspective to understanding the evolution of color phenotypes in animals.