Journal
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
Volume 289, Issue 1967, Pages -Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2021.2484
Keywords
hummingbirds; specialization; diversification
Categories
Funding
- NERC PhD studentship under the Adapting to the Challenges of a Changing Environment (ACCE) DTP
- European Research Council [615709]
- Royal Society University Research Fellowship [URF\R\180006]
- NERC Standard grant [NE/T000139/1]
- NERC [NE/T000139/1] Funding Source: UKRI
- European Research Council (ERC) [615709] Funding Source: European Research Council (ERC)
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The study found that the evolution of traplining in hummingbirds involves morphological specialization through the coevolution of longer bills with long-tubed flowers. It was previously believed that this specialization was irreversible and an evolutionary dead end, but the study discovered multiple independent transitions to traplining and suggested that it does not lead to lower rates of diversification.
Trapliners are pollinators that visit widely dispersed flowers along circuitous foraging routes. The evolution of traplining in hummingbirds is thought to entail morphological specialization through the reciprocal coevolution of longer bills with the long-tubed flowers of widely dispersed plant species. Specialization, such as that exhibited by traplining hummingbirds, is often viewed as both irreversible and an evolutionary dead end. We tested these predictions in a macroevolutionary framework. Specifically, we assessed the relationship between beak morphology and foraging and tested whether transitions to traplining are irreversible and lead to lower rates of diversification as predicted by the hypothesis that specialization is an evolutionary dead end. We find that there have been multiple independent transitions to traplining across the hummingbird phylogeny, but reversals have been rare or incomplete at best. Multiple independent lineages of trapliners have become morphologically specialized, convergently evolving relatively large bills for their body size. Traplining is not an evolutionary dead end however, since trapliners continue to give rise to new traplining species at a rate comparable to non-trapliners.
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