By Susan Milius
Taking an uncommon perspective on fashions that entice the opposite sex, European researchers have documented the first case of females in the wild decked out to advertise their good genes to picky males.
The more sexy black spots that a female barn owl sports on her breast feathers, the more disease resistance she passes to her offspring. This link between spots and good genes could explain male taste for spottier females, Alexandre Roulin, now at the University of Cambridge in England, and his colleagues report in the May 7 Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B.