California hummingbird beaks transformed by feeders: ‘more tapered and longer'
A seemingly straightforward question, but the answer might not be so simple. According to a recently published study in Global Change Biology, the use of human-made hummingbird feeders has changed the beak sizes and shapes of Anna's hummingbirds, and spread their range from a narrow pocket of California all the way up the coast to British Columbia.
Nicolas Alexandre, one of the paper's authors, collaborated with 15 other researchers from a cumulative 12 institutions to produce the paper, which has been in the works since 2019. Alexandre compared the spread of Anna's hummingbirds to that of a better-known, less beloved aviatory fellow.
'Anna's hummingbirds are kind of like the pigeons of the hummingbirds because they've expanded north with human settlement,' Alexandre said.
The changed bill shape and habitat size happened at a breakneck pace, evolutionarily speaking. Researchers analyzed archives from Newspapers.com to look at the expansion of eucalyptus forests in California, a prime source of nectar introduced from Australia in the mid-19th century, and advertisements for hummingbird feeders. Urbanization statistics were pulled from the US census; bird populations were based off data from the Audubon Society's annual Christmas bird count; and bill shapes and sizes were pulled from museum specimens.
The results were clear: as urbanization, particularly after the second world war, brought hummingbird feeders up the California coast, Anna's hummingbirds followed, and their beaks became 'more tapered and longer' to adapt to a new food source. Alexandre said that, from a hummingbird's point of view, the feeders are a no-brainer.
'Imagine you have a bunch of flowers and the shape of the flower is going to constrain how efficiently you can feed from that flower. Now imagine you have this giant reservoir of nectar that's always available,' Alexandre said. 'I want to get as much nectar with every drink before someone displaces me at the feeder. A longer beak with more volume is going to be advantageous.'
While Anna's hummingbirds may have spread their wings to a wider range, hummingbird populations as a whole are on the decline. Alexandre views the case as a neat example of human hobbies pushing environmental change, and says the paper opens questions regarding why some species are flourishing in the face of human-induced change while many others struggle.
'It is a great example of how morphological change can happen really rapidly in response to an environmental change,' Alexandre said. 'There's so many other species that aren't able to change at the same rate climate change is happening.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Atai and Recognify's schizophrenia drug fails to meet main goal in trial
July 25 (Reuters) - Atai Life Sciences ( opens new tab and its partner Recognify Life Sciences said on Friday their experimental drug did not meet the main goal in a mid-stage trial for patients with schizophrenia-linked cognitive impairment. U.S.-listed shares of atai dropped about 17% in extended trading. The trial enrolled 242 patients with cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia (CIAS), which affects memory, attention and decision-making in people with the mental illness. Recognify said patients taking the drug, inidascamine, showed some improvement in cognitive tests compared with a placebo, but the results were not statistically significant. Despite the drug missing the main goal, Recognify said patients on inidascamine showed consistent signs of improvement in areas such as processing speed and verbal learning, with positive trends on a test assessing real-world cognitive abilities. The drug was well-tolerated, with no signs of sedation, weight gain, or movement-related side effects, which are common with existing schizophrenia treatments. CIAS remains one of the most challenging and underserved areas in mental health, with no FDA-approved treatments. Atai and Recognify's setback adds to a string of failures in CIAS drug development, including last year's decision by Neurocrine Biosciences (NBIX.O), opens new tab to halt its own CIAS drug program after disappointing results. Cognitive deficits affect about 80% of people with schizophrenia, a condition that impacts roughly 24 million individuals globally, according to the World Health Organization. Standard treatment for schizophrenia typically involves antipsychotic medications that help manage hallucinations and delusions, but often do not address cognitive symptoms. Recognify, which is majority-owned by Berlin-based Atai, said it will continue to analyze full trial results and present further data at upcoming scientific meetings. Atai said it intends to focus resources on its own pipeline of psychedelic-based therapies for mood-affecting disorders, while continuing to support Recognify's efforts.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Sharknado? The next generation of hurricane forecasters could be sharks
Researchers are deploying an unlikely ally in the effort to improve hurricane forecasting. Three sharks fitted with sensors are swimming in warm Atlantic Ocean waters to collect critical hurricane data, a contrast to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's usual flying Hurricane Hunters in the skies. 'The ocean is so huge, so enormous, that it's just inaccessible to anything, for the most part,' Aaron Carlisle, a University of Delaware marine ecologist leading the effort, told The Washington Post. 'But by instrumenting the animals that live out there,' he said, 'you can basically turn them into these ocean sensors that are constantly collecting data.' The sharks are collecting information on water conductivity and temperature. Record sea surface temperatures have fueled particularly large and strong hurricanes in recent years. The temperatures are the result of a warming planet and human-caused climate change. It's unclear whether the sharks will ever get close to the cyclones. But, by monitoring the temperature, the scientists can better understand what the U.S. is in for each hurricane season, including where the hurricanes will go and if they're supercharged. Sharks, a keystone species and an apex predator, have a unique access to data that has been hard to get. Weather satellites are unable to see past the ocean's surface and the robotic gliders that scientists send to the continental shelf are effective but slow and expensive to maintain. The tags on the sharks have the ability to collect that data more efficiently. Two mako sharks are tagged to measure temperature, depth, and conductivity. A white shark has a satellite tag to help evaluate if the species could be a good candidate for similar tagging in the future. They may also test hammerheads and whale sharks. 'Sharks are faster than [robotic] gliders. They can stay out for longer periods of time,' Caroline Wiernicki, a shark ecologist and Ph.D student working with Carlisle, told The Post. 'So the hope is that we can have these sharks go out and work in concert' with existing monitors, she said. The research is being led by Carlisle and fellow University of Delaware professor Matt Oliver. They are working with the NOAA's Mid-Atlantic Regional Association Coastal Ocean Observing System – the regional arm of the agency's Integrated Ocean Observing System program. In the future, the plan is to tag dozens of sharks a year and feed that data into hurricane computer models. So far, Carlisle told The Post that one of the two sharks has relayed temperature data back to them, but the other has been swimming in water too shallow for the sensor to turn on. The researchers said that they chose the makos because they often return to the surface, allowing the tags to send the data to satellites for the scientists to retrieve. Able to reach swimming speeds of over 40 miles per hour, shortfin makos are the fastest sharks in the ocean. Following a review, NOAA said in 2022 that it would not list them as a threatened or endangered species. They are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. Right now, one in three species of sharks and rays are threatened with extinction. Overfishing has driven global shark and ray numbers down by more than 70 percent since the 1970s, according to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. The charity notes that humans kill around 190 sharks per minute and 100 million sharks each year in commercial fisheries. The researchers explained to USA Today that they did not expect the sensors to have much harmful impact on their test subjects and that they undergo a thorough permitting and review process. 'We do everything we can to minimize the impact of puncturing the animals' fins,' Carlisle told The Post. 'We all love the animals, so we don't want to hurt them.'
Reuters
an hour ago
- Reuters
Atai Life Sciences schizophrenia drug fails to meet main goal in trial
July 25 (Reuters) - Atai Life Sciences ( opens new tab and its partner Recognify Life Sciences said on Friday their experimental drug did not meet the main goal in a mid-stage trial for patients with cognitive impairment linked to schizophrenia. U.S.-listed shares of atai fell about 14% in extended trading. Recognify said patients taking the drug, inidascamine, showed some improvement in cognitive tests compared with a placebo, but the results were not statistically significant. The trial enrolled 242 patients with cognitive impairment associated with schizophrenia, which affects memory, attention and decision-making in people with the mental illness. Despite the drug missing the main goal, Recognify said patients on inidascamine showed consistent signs of improvement in areas such as processing speed and verbal learning, with positive trends on a test assessing real-world cognitive abilities.
