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

 
ANSWER: Ruby-throated Hummingbird 
Swifts and hummingbirds look and behave very in every other case. Swifts are insect-eating swoopers that catch flies and airborne bugs on the wing, whereas hummingbirds are nectar-eating flower-sippers that can hover in midair. Nonetheless swifts and hummingbirds are related in evolution by a typical ancestor and categorised throughout the equal clade.

The anatomy of swifts and hummingbirds holds clues that they’re associated; each birds have tiny toes coated in naked pores and pores and pores and skin, and each have quick, thick humerus bones of their wings that facilitate their spectacular flying talents.

Swallows and storm-petrels considerably resemble swifts and hummingbirds, however that’s a case of convergent evolution. The cigar-shaped our our our bodies shared by swifts and swallows are favored for chopping by way of the air looking for prey. Storm-petrels independently developed a optimistic wing constructing for hovering, although all through the case of storm-petrels they hover to grab zooplankton off the bottom of the ocean.

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

The Downy doubtless developed feather patterns to make it look like a Bushy so it’d confuse predators or rivals for meals. By making an attempt similar to the larger Bushy Woodpecker, the Downy optimistic parts a bit little little bit of dominance revenue all through the pecking order with fully totally different birds.

Current molecular DNA analysis has revealed that Downy and Bushy Woodpeckers break up aside about 6.5 million years beforehand. The Downy belongs to a clade that choices Lesser Noticed Woodpecker (which ranges all by way of Europe, Asia, and North Africa), whereas the Bushy is in a clade with fully totally different American woodpeckers like White-headed and Purple-cockaded that, considerably surprisingly, bear little household resemblance.

Reply: Purple-lored Parrot
Twenty years beforehand, most taxonomists thought that falcons, hawks, and fully totally different birds of prey had been intently associated. Nonetheless current DNA analyses help the classification of falcons in a separate clade from hawks and eagles.

In exact fact, scientists now know falcons are additional intently associated to parrots than to every totally different rooster of prey. Falcons and parrots share some selections of skeletal anatomy which may very well be doubtless a vestige of a typical ancestry prior to they break up spherical 68 million years beforehand.

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

Reply: Northern Cardinal
For years, the Western Tanager and fully totally different North American birds with tanager names—like Scarlet and Summer season season Tanager—had been considered northern representatives of the assorted true tanager clade, which is centered in Central and South America. Current DNA analyses have revealed, nonetheless, that North American tanagers are actually members of the cardinal family (Cardinalidae).

The true tanagers are all through the Thraupidae household, which features a whole lot of vibrant birds such because of the Brazilian Tanager and the Seven-colored Tanager. Curiously, a rooster generally known as the Purple-crested Cardinal in South America—and a lot of different totally different fully totally different red-crested, seemingly cardinal relations of that continent—are furthermore all through the tanager household.

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

Japanese and Western Meadowlarks are literally additional intently associated to Purple-winged Blackbirds and grackles (all through the family Icteridae) than to the Horned Larks that furthermore occupy open-country grasslands in North America.

Icterids are notably quite a few in South America, the place one totally different meadowlark relative may very well be discovered. The Chestnut-headed Oropendola is a gigantic rooster of tropical forests from Mexico to Ecuador that sports activities actions actions a formidable casque, an extension of its ivory-colored invoice that reaches as lots as a result of the brow.

The Horned Lark is the one usually occurring rooster all through the Americas from the Alaudidae family, which incorporates so-called true larks such because 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 all through the family Motacillidae, which incorporates wagtails and pipits (together with the American Pipit).

Reply: Iiwi
The American Goldfinch—an precise finch of the household Fringillidae— is among the many many commonest birds seen at yard feeders spherical North America. Folks love goldfinches because of breeding male’s beautiful black-and-yellow plumage.

The Saffron Finch, which ranges from Colombia to Argentina, shares a lot of the goldfinch’s bodily selections, but it surely certainly completely’s not an precise finch (shock, it’s furthermore a member of the South American tanager household). The Verdin is the one North American member of the Remizidae household, which incorporates the so-called penduline-tits (like Chinese language language language Penduline-Tit and Yellow Penduline-Tit) which may very well be in another case all present in Eurasia and Africa.

Throughout the meantime, the spectacular honeycreepers of the Hawaiian Islands—together with the blazing purple Iiwi—are alongside goldfinches all through the Fringillidae household. An ancestor of the Iiwi is assumed to have arrived on the islands from Asia about 5 to 7 million years beforehand, and comparatively speedy evolution turned that ancestor into dozens of Hawaiian honeycreeper species.

Reply: Sunbittern
The Kagu is among the many many oddest-looking birds on this planet—an unlimited flightless species that can carry out a formidable spread-wing current to degree out off boldly patterned wing feathers. A flashy current with flared wings may very well be a habits of their evolutionary cousin, the Sunbittern.

Kagu are an remoted island endemic species on New Caledonia, an archipelago about 900 miles off the jap coast of Australia. Sunbitterns, throughout the meantime, dwell on the choice facet of the world, in a ramification that stretches from northern Central America to Brazil. Each species are furthermore considerably remoted on the avian evolutionary tree as a result of the one members of their respective households (Rhynochetidae for Kagu, and Eurypygidae for Sunbittern).

Their evolutionary connection goes as soon as extra to a prehistoric frequent ancestor that lived on the usual supercontinent of Gondwana. After the supercontinent broke aside and that ancestor died off (together with most of its relations), the Kagu was left stranded on distant islands all through the South Pacific, and Sunbittern all through the forested coronary coronary coronary heart of Central and South America.

The Sungrebe (which isn’t actually a grebe) and Capped Heron are furthermore evolutionary oddballs, the one precise members of their very private genera—Heliornis for the sooner and Pilherodius for the latter.

Reply: White-fronted Chat
Nectar-feeding birds the world over present a fantastic case evaluation of convergent evolution—hummingbirds, sugarbirds, sunbirds, honeyeaters, and honeycreepers have all developed remarkably similar-looking extended funds tailored for poking into flowers. Nonetheless these 5 households of birds all come from far-flung areas of the avian phylogeny.

The nearly 200 species of the honeyeater household (Meliphagidae, which incorporates Tawny-crowned Honeyeater) dwell in Australia and islands of the encircling area. Furthermore in Australia lives one totally different rooster generally known as the White-fronted Chat—which doesn’t resemble a honeyeater moderately lots in the least. White-fronted Chats are hardcore insectivores that solely usually go to flowers. Notably, White-fronted Chats have brush-tipped tongues like honeyeaters and fully totally different nectarivorous birds (the higher for slurping up nectar).

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