Figure 1.
Pictures of wild Andean condors.
(a) male and (b) female adult wild Andean condors showing similar orange tongue colour and different iris colour. (c) A dominant adult male Andean condor is identified by its characteristic yellow neck (enlarged picture) in a typical mix of condors and American black vultures (white arrows) gathered around a carcass. (d) A subadult male condor can be identified on the right (yellow arrow) by its less intense but still conspicuous yellow colour in the neck. Photos, a: U. Mellone, b: G. Ignazi, and c-d: V. Cailly Arnulphi.
Figure 2.
HPLC chromatograms of plasma carotenoids.
C18 reversed-phase HPLC chromatogram obtained for a carotenoid extract from wild Andean condor and wild American black vulture plasma samples. Peak identities: 1, all-trans-zeaxanthin; 2, all-trans-lutein; 3 & 4, mixture of cis isomers of zeaxanthin and lutein; 5, all-trans-α-cryptoxanthin; 6, all-trans-β-cryptoxanthin; 7, echinenone; 8, all-trans-β-carotene. Detection wavelength was 450 nm.
Table 1.
Carotenoid concentration (mean ± SD µg/mL) of each pigment and total carotenoid concentration in plasma of wild and captive Andean condors and in wild American black vultures.
Figure 3.
Relationships between plasma lutein and β-carotene.
Relationships between concentration (µg/mL) of lutein and β-carotene in plasma of wild American black vultures (black symbols) and wild Andean condors (white symbols). Isoline is shown indicating an equal ratio between carotenoids.
Table 2.
Factor analysis loadings for the main factors (eigenvalues >1) extracted from the correlation matrix of concentrations of each type of plasma carotenoids within individual wild and captive Andean condors and wild American black vultures.
Figure 4.
(a) Total plasma carotenoid concentration according to age of wild (black points) and captive (white points) Andean condors; sample size is shown above bars. (b) Plasma concentration of each carotenoid type (see Fig.2 for reference) and total carotenoid concentration (right axis) according to age (pooled juveniles and subadults: black points, n = 8, adults: white points, n = 14) and (c) sex (males: white points, n = 7, females: black points, n = 15) of wild Andean condors. Points are mean values, and bars are 95% CI.
Table 3.
Summary of results from the ANOVA.