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

 
ANSWER: Ruby-throated Hummingbird 
Swifts and hummingbirds look and behave very otherwise. Swifts are insect-eating swoopers that catch flies and airborne bugs on the wing, whereas hummingbirds are nectar-eating flower-sippers that may hover in midair. But swifts and hummingbirds are related in evolution by a typical ancestor and categorised in the identical clade.

The anatomy of swifts and hummingbirds holds clues that they’re associated; each birds have tiny toes coated in naked 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 bodies shared by swifts and swallows are favored for chopping via the air looking for prey. Storm-petrels independently developed a positive wing construction for hovering, although within the case of storm-petrels they hover to grab zooplankton off the floor of the ocean.

Reply: Lesser Noticed Woodpecker
It’s simple to confuse a Downy and a Bushy Woodpecker at a chicken 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 family members, each thought of to be members of the genus Dryobates. Nevertheless it seems, that good matching plumage is one other case of convergent evolution.

The Downy doubtless developed feather patterns to make it seem like a Bushy so it might confuse predators or rivals for meals. By trying like the larger Bushy Woodpecker, the Downy positive factors a little bit of dominance benefit within the pecking order with different birds.

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

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

In actual fact, scientists now know falcons are extra intently associated to parrots than to every other chicken of prey. Falcons and parrots share some options of skeletal anatomy which might be doubtless a vestige of a typical ancestry earlier than they break up round 68 million years in the past.

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

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

The true tanagers are within the Thraupidae household, which incorporates a whole lot of colourful birds such because the Brazilian Tanager and the Seven-colored Tanager. Curiously, a chicken referred to as the Purple-crested Cardinal in South America—and several other different red-crested, seemingly cardinal family members of that continent—are additionally within 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 extra intently associated to Purple-winged Blackbirds and grackles (within the family Icteridae) than to the Horned Larks that additionally occupy open-country grasslands in North America.

Icterids are notably various in South America, the place one other meadowlark relative might be discovered. The Chestnut-headed Oropendola is a big chicken of tropical forests from Mexico to Ecuador that sports activities a formidable casque, an extension of its ivory-colored invoice that reaches as much as the brow.

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

Reply: Iiwi
The American Goldfinch—a real finch of the household Fringillidae— is among the commonest birds seen at yard feeders round North America. Individuals love goldfinches due to the breeding male’s beautiful black-and-yellow plumage.

The Saffron Finch, which ranges from Colombia to Argentina, shares lots of the goldfinch’s bodily options, but it surely’s not a real finch (shock, it’s additionally 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 Penduline-Tit and Yellow Penduline-Tit) which might be in any other case all present in Eurasia and Africa.

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

Reply: Sunbittern
The Kagu is among the oddest-looking birds on this planet—a big flightless species that may carry out a formidable spread-wing show to point out off boldly patterned wing feathers. A flashy show with flared wings can be a behavior 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, in the meantime, dwell on the opposite facet of the world, in a spread that stretches from northern Central America to Brazil. Each species are additionally considerably remoted on the avian evolutionary tree as the one members of their respective households (Rhynochetidae for Kagu, and Eurypygidae for Sunbittern).

Their evolutionary connection goes again to a prehistoric frequent ancestor that lived on the traditional supercontinent of Gondwana. After the supercontinent broke aside and that ancestor died off (together with most of its family members), the Kagu was left stranded on distant islands within the South Pacific, and Sunbittern within the forested coronary heart of Central and South America.

The Sungrebe (which isn’t actually a grebe) and Capped Heron are additionally evolutionary oddballs, the only real members of their very own genera—Heliornis for the previous and Pilherodius for the latter.

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

The almost 200 species of the honeyeater household (Meliphagidae, which incorporates Tawny-crowned Honeyeater) dwell in Australia and islands of the encircling area. Additionally in Australia lives one other chicken referred to as the White-fronted Chat—which doesn’t resemble a honeyeater a lot in any respect. White-fronted Chats are hardcore insectivores that solely sometimes go to flowers. Notably, White-fronted Chats have brush-tipped tongues like honeyeaters and 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 historical past.