By Susan Milius
A beauty tip from starlings: Get some household help.
In African species where several adults tend the chicks of one mother, females tend to grow as big and flashy as the males, says Dustin Rubenstein of Columbia University. In nests without extra helpers, dad tends to outshine mom in finery.
What’s likely pushing these female starlings to iridescent glory in cooperative breeding species is an intense rivalry to be the nesting group’s egg-layer, according to Rubenstein and Irby Lovette of Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca, N.Y.