My Ruffled Hummer

by Nick Boren

Title

My Ruffled Hummer

Artist

Nick Boren

Medium

Photograph - Nikon Digital Image

Description

Ruffled hummer is not really a name for a hummingbird. I am just calling this one that because of all the ruffled feathers around this one's head. I have never seen one like that before now.

From Wikapedia:
Hummingbirds are thought to have split from other members of Apodiformes, the insectivorous swifts (family Apodidae) and treeswifts (family Hemiprocnidae) about 42 million years ago, probably in Eurasia.[8] Despite their current New World distribution, the earliest known species of humming bird are known from the early Oligocene (Rupelian ~34-28 million years ago) of Europe, belonging to the genus Eurotrochilus, which is very similar in its morphology to modern hummingbirds.[13][16][17] A phylogenetic tree unequivocally indicates that modern hummingbirds originated in South America, with the last common ancestor of all living hummingbirds living around 22 million years ago.[8]

A map of the hummingbird family tree – reconstructed from analysis of 284 of the world's 338 known species – shows rapid diversification from 22 million years ago.[18] Hummingbirds fall into nine main clades, the topazes, hermits, mangoes, brilliants, coquettes, the giant hummingbird, mountaingems, bees, and emeralds, defining their relationship to nectar-bearing flowering plants and the birds' continued spread into new geographic areas.[18][7][8][19]

While all hummingbirds depend on flower nectar to fuel their high metabolisms and hovering flight, coordinated changes in flower and bill shape stimulated the formation of new species of hummingbirds and plants. Due to this exceptional evolutionary pattern, as many as 140 hummingbird species can coexist in a specific region, such as the Andes range.[18]

The hummingbird evolutionary tree shows one key evolutionary factor appears to have been an altered taste receptor that enabled hummingbirds to seek nectar.[20]

The Andes Mountains appear to be a particularly rich environment for hummingbird evolution because diversification occurred simultaneously with mountain uplift over the past 10 million years.[18] Hummingbirds remain in dynamic diversification inhabiting ecological regions across South America, North America, and the Caribbean, indicating an enlarging evolutionary radiation.[18]

Within the same geographic region, hummingbird clades co-evolved with nectar-bearing plant clades, affecting mechanisms of pollination.[21][22] The same is true for the sword-billed hummingbird (Ensifera ensifera), one of the morphologically most extreme species, and one of its main food plant clades (Passiflora section Tacsonia).[23]

Uploaded

February 2nd, 2022

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