Image credits :

1/ Photo by Mohammad Husaini on Unsplash
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6/ Photo by Jatin Saini on Unsplash
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Addiotinal graphics are taken from the Wellcome Collection

6/ Quantifying the nature and complexity of bird colouration is a unique way to tie together physical characteristics, the perceived aesthetic values of birds, and global avian conservation that both lets us examine the diversity we risk losing and the ability to use colour for conservation.

5/ When looking at the percentage of overlap between:

- Export/Native birds
- Import/Native birds

We can see how colour rich countries tend to be more selective while countries with a smaller native colour space trade across their entire colour space.

4/ There is also a global demand for non-monochromatic birds

- Likelihood of trade generally decreases with increasing area of a single colour on the body, particularly dull colours like grey, black and brown

- Exceptions include rare colours like purple and green

3/ More colourful and more colour unique birds are more likely to be traded across both males and females.

In general there's more colour across all traded birds when comparing them to the total percentages of bird colours.

2/ Using
- 20 years of trade data from CITES
- Bird colour data for over 8,500 species obtained from photographs of museum specimens

We can come up with various colour metrics including colourfulness, colour uniqueness, colour categories, and overlap.