Quiz: Can You Pick the Closest Relatives on the Tree of Avian Evolution? – Nirantara – Niraranra

 
ANSWER: Ruby-throated Hummingbird 
Swifts and hummingbirds look and behave very in any other case. Swifts are insect-eating swoopers that catch flies and airborne bugs on the wing, whereas hummingbirds are nectar-eating flower-sippers that will hover in midair. However swifts and hummingbirds are associated in evolution by a typical ancestor and categorised within the equivalent clade.

The anatomy of swifts and hummingbirds holds clues that they’re related; every birds have tiny toes coated in bare pores and pores and skin, and every have fast, thick humerus bones of their wings that facilitate their spectacular flying abilities.

Swallows and storm-petrels significantly resemble swifts and hummingbirds, nevertheless that’s a case of convergent evolution. The cigar-shaped our our bodies shared by swifts and swallows are favored for chopping through the air searching for prey. Storm-petrels independently developed a optimistic wing building for hovering, though throughout the case of storm-petrels they hover to seize zooplankton off the ground of the ocean.

Reply: Lesser Observed Woodpecker
It’s easy to confuse a Downy and a Bushy Woodpecker at a rooster feeder; the Downy seems to be like like a black-and-white mini-doppelganger of the Bushy. For a couple of years scientists had been confused, too—as Downy and Bushy Woodpecker had been categorised as shut relations, every considered to be members of the genus Dryobates. Nonetheless it appears, that good matching plumage is one different case of convergent evolution.

The Downy likely developed feather patterns to make it appear to be a Bushy so it’d confuse predators or rivals for meals. By attempting just like the bigger Bushy Woodpecker, the Downy optimistic components a bit little bit of dominance profit throughout the pecking order with completely different birds.

Present molecular DNA evaluation has revealed that Downy and Bushy Woodpeckers break up apart about 6.5 million years previously. The Downy belongs to a clade that options Lesser Observed Woodpecker (which ranges all through Europe, Asia, and North Africa), whereas the Bushy is in a clade with completely different American woodpeckers like White-headed and Purple-cockaded that, significantly surprisingly, bear little family resemblance.

Reply: Purple-lored Parrot
Twenty years previously, most taxonomists thought that falcons, hawks, and completely different birds of prey had been intently related. Nevertheless present DNA analyses assist the classification of falcons in a separate clade from hawks and eagles.

In precise truth, scientists now know falcons are further intently related to parrots than to each different rooster of prey. Falcons and parrots share some choices of skeletal anatomy which could be likely a vestige of a typical ancestry sooner than they break up spherical 68 million years previously.

Hawks and Osprey are further intently related to owls, hoopoes, motmots, and hornbills than they’re to falcons.

Reply: Northern Cardinal
For years, the Western Tanager and completely different North American birds with tanager names—like Scarlet and Summer time season Tanager—had been thought of northern representatives of the various true tanager clade, which is centered in Central and South America. Present DNA analyses have revealed, however, that North American tanagers are literally members of the cardinal family (Cardinalidae).

The true tanagers are throughout the Thraupidae family, which includes a entire lot of vibrant birds such as a result of the Brazilian Tanager and the Seven-colored Tanager. Curiously, a rooster known as the Purple-crested Cardinal in South America—and a number of other different completely different red-crested, seemingly cardinal relations of that continent—are moreover throughout the tanager family.

Reply: Chestnut-headed Oropendola
When digging into avian phylogeny, it appears a meadowlark isn’t a lark—it’s a blackbird.

Japanese and Western Meadowlarks are actually further intently related to Purple-winged Blackbirds and grackles (throughout the family Icteridae) than to the Horned Larks that moreover occupy open-country grasslands in North America.

Icterids are notably numerous in South America, the place one different meadowlark relative could be found. The Chestnut-headed Oropendola is an enormous rooster of tropical forests from Mexico to Ecuador that sports activities actions a formidable casque, an extension of its ivory-colored bill that reaches as a lot because the forehead.

The Horned Lark is the one normally occurring rooster throughout the Americas from the Alaudidae family, which includes so-called true larks such as a result of the Eurasian Skylark and the bushlarks of Southeast Asia. The Yellow-throated Longclaw is a meadowlark look-alike that lives in Africa and is classed throughout the family Motacillidae, which includes wagtails and pipits (along with the American Pipit).

Reply: Iiwi
The American Goldfinch—an actual finch of the family Fringillidae— is among the many commonest birds seen at yard feeders spherical North America. People love goldfinches as a result of breeding male’s stunning black-and-yellow plumage.

The Saffron Finch, which ranges from Colombia to Argentina, shares a number of the goldfinch’s bodily choices, but it surely absolutely’s not an actual finch (shock, it’s moreover a member of the South American tanager family). The Verdin is the one North American member of the Remizidae family, which includes the so-called penduline-tits (like Chinese language language Penduline-Tit and Yellow Penduline-Tit) which could be in some other case all current in Eurasia and Africa.

Within the meantime, the spectacular honeycreepers of the Hawaiian Islands—along with the blazing purple Iiwi—are alongside goldfinches throughout the Fringillidae family. An ancestor of the Iiwi is assumed to have arrived on the islands from Asia about 5 to 7 million years previously, and relatively speedy evolution turned that ancestor into dozens of Hawaiian honeycreeper species.

Reply: Sunbittern
The Kagu is among the many oddest-looking birds on this planet—an enormous flightless species that will perform a formidable spread-wing present to level out off boldly patterned wing feathers. A flashy present with flared wings could be a habits of their evolutionary cousin, the Sunbittern.

Kagu are an isolated island endemic species on New Caledonia, an archipelago about 900 miles off the jap coast of Australia. Sunbitterns, within the meantime, dwell on the alternative side of the world, in a ramification that stretches from northern Central America to Brazil. Every species are moreover significantly isolated on the avian evolutionary tree because the one members of their respective households (Rhynochetidae for Kagu, and Eurypygidae for Sunbittern).

Their evolutionary connection goes once more to a prehistoric frequent ancestor that lived on the standard supercontinent of Gondwana. After the supercontinent broke apart and that ancestor died off (along with most of its relations), the Kagu was left stranded on distant islands throughout the South Pacific, and Sunbittern throughout the forested coronary coronary heart of Central and South America.

The Sungrebe (which isn’t really a grebe) and Capped Heron are moreover evolutionary oddballs, the one actual members of their very personal genera—Heliornis for the earlier and Pilherodius for the latter.

Reply: White-fronted Chat
Nectar-feeding birds the world over current a beautiful case analysis of convergent evolution—hummingbirds, sugarbirds, sunbirds, honeyeaters, and honeycreepers have all developed remarkably similar-looking prolonged funds tailor-made for poking into flowers. However these 5 households of birds all come from far-flung areas of the avian phylogeny.

The virtually 200 species of the honeyeater family (Meliphagidae, which includes Tawny-crowned Honeyeater) dwell in Australia and islands of the encircling space. Moreover in Australia lives one different rooster known as the White-fronted Chat—which doesn’t resemble a honeyeater rather a lot the least bit. White-fronted Chats are hardcore insectivores that solely generally go to flowers. Notably, White-fronted Chats have brush-tipped tongues like honeyeaters and completely different nectarivorous birds (the upper for slurping up nectar).

It appears the White-fronted Chat is a long-lost honeyeater relative, and the brush-tipped tongue is a vestige of its nectar-sipping evolutionary historic previous.