Fig. 3: Higher body mass in East sakers due to introgressed SR-B1^121Leu from gyrfalcons.

a Correlation between body mass and annual mean temperature for both female (left; 10 gyrfalcons, 34 sakers including 11 from West, 15 from MN and eight from QTP) and male (right; nine gyrfalcons, 34 sakers including eight from West, 16 from MN and ten from QTP) falcons using a linear regression model. The mean (blue line) and 95% CI (gray band) are shown. Significance level was calculated using F test. b High-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDLC) concentration of plasma in comparisons of West (N = 6 biologically independent samples) and East sakers (N = 12 biologically independent samples), MN (N = 6 biologically independent samples) and QTP sakers (N = 6 biologically independent samples). A two-sided t test was used. In the box plots, the center line represents the median, whiskers represent maximum and minimum values, and box boundaries represent 75th and 25th percentiles. c Amino acid on SR-B1¹²¹ in 172 avian species; black and red branches represent species featuring SR-B1^121Pro and SR-B1^121Leu, respectively. d Scheme showing how SR-B1^121Pro promotes HDLC uptake from blood to liver. HDL high-density lipoprotein. e Cellular cholesterol concentrations in HeLa cells transfected with SR-B1^121Leu, SR-B1^121Pro and control plasmids, respectively. The bars display mean ± SD (N = 3 independent experiments). A two-sided t test was used. Source data are provided as a Source Data file.