The range of colors of the hummingbird exceeds that of the rest of the birds combined

The range of colors in hummingbird plumage exceeds the color diversity of all other bird species combined.

That’s the conclusion of a study led by Yale ornithologist Richard Prum, who has spent years studying the molecules and nanostructures that give many species of birds their colorful plumage. It is published in the journal Communications Biology.

“We knew hummingbirds were colorful, but we never imagined they would rival all other birds put together,” Prum, Ornithology Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, said in a statement.

For the study, Gabriela Venable, a former undergraduate student in Prum’s lab (now a graduate student at Duke University), collected data on the wavelengths of light reflected by feathers from 1,600 plumage samples from 114 species. of hummingbirds. Later, the researchers compared this information to an existing dataset of colors found in the plumage of 111 other bird species, from penguins to parrots..

Using their knowledge of the visual physiology of birds, the Yale team was able to describe the diversity of bird plumage colors seen by the birds themselves, including shades not visible to humans.

Birds have four types of colored cones that are sensitive to red, green, blue, and ultraviolet/violet colors. So that birds can see all the colors visible to humans. But they can also see a host of other colors that humans can’t, including ultraviolet, and mixtures of ultraviolet with other hues, like ultraviolet-yellow and ultraviolet-green. These colors are as different from yellow or green as purple is from blue or red. One of the ways that hummingbirds add to the color diversity of birds is by producing more of these colors combined than other birds.

According to the team’s new findings, the diversity of colors visible to birds in the plumage of hummingbirds exceeds the known diversity of colors found in the plumages of all other bird species combined, increasing the total number of colors visible. for birds by 56%. Revealed colors in hummingbird plumage include saturated blues, bluish greens, and deep purples that are most variable on the animals’ crown and throat, which they display prominently during mating displays and social interactions.

The sheer breadth of hummingbirds’ colorful plumage is the result of nanostructures in their feather barbules, the smaller filaments that project from their feather quills.

“Watching a single hummingbird is quite extraordinary,” Prum said. “But the combination of versatile optic structures and complex sexual displays make hummingbirds the most colorful family of birds of all.”

Source-listindiario.com