Hummingbird - Wikipedia

Hummingbirds are birds local to the Americas and contain the organic circle of relatives Trochilidae. With approximately 361 species and 113 genera,[1] they arise from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, however the tremendous majority of the species are determined inside the tropics. They are small birds, with maximum species measuring 7.5–thirteen cm (3–5 in) in period. The smallest extant hummingbird species is the five cm (2.0 in) bee hummingbird, which weighs much less than 2.zero g (0.07 ounces). The biggest hummingbird species is the 23 cm (nine.1 in) massive hummingbird, weighing 18–24 grams (0.63–0.85 oz). They are specialized for feeding on flower nectar, but all species also eat flying bugs or spiders.

Hummingbirds break up from their sister institution, the swifts and treeswifts, round forty two million years in the past. The not unusual ancestor of extant hummingbirds is anticipated to have lived 22 million years in the past in South America. They are referred to as hummingbirds due to the humming sound created with the aid of their beating wings, which flap at high frequencies audible to people. They hover in mid-air at fast wing-flapping prices, which range from round 12 beats according to second in the biggest species to round eighty in line with 2nd in small hummingbirds. Of those species that have been measured in the course of flying in wind tunnels, their top speeds exceed 15 m/s (54 km/h; 34 mph). During courtship, a few male species dive from 30 metres (one hundred toes) of peak above a woman at speeds around 23 m/s (83 km/h; 51 mph).[2][three]

Hummingbirds have the best mass-specific metabolic charge of any homeothermic animal.[4] To preserve electricity while meals is scarce and at . night time when now not foraging, they are able to input torpor, a kingdom similar to hibernation, and gradual their metabolic charge to at least one/15 of its everyday rate.[5]Taxonomy and systematics[edit]

The own family Trochilidae was added in 1825 by way of Irish zoologist Nicholas Aylward Vigors with Trochilus as the type genus.[6][7] Molecular phylogenetic research of the hummingbirds have proven that the circle of relatives is composed of nine major clades.[8][nine] When Edward Dickinson and James Van Remsen Jr. updated the Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World for the 4th edition in 2013, they divided the hummingbirds into six subfamilies.[10]

Molecular phylogenetic research decided the relationships between the predominant groups of hummingbirds.[9][11] In the cladogram beneath, the English names are those brought in 1997.[12] The Latin names are the ones brought in 2013.

In conventional taxonomy, hummingbirds are located in the order Apodiformes, which also contains the swifts, however a few taxonomists have separated them into their own order, the Trochiliformes. Hummingbirds' wing bones are hole and fragile, making fossilization difficult and leaving their evolutionary history poorly documented. Though scientists theorize that hummingbirds originated in South America, where species range is best, viable ancestors of extant hummingbirds may have lived in elements of Europe and what is southern Russia today.[14]

Around 360 hummingbirds were described. They have been historically divided into two subfamilies: the hermits (subfamily Phaethornithinae) and the standard hummingbirds (subfamily Trochilinae, all of the others). Molecular phylogenetic research have proven, although, that the hermits are sister to the topazes, making the former definition of the Trochilinae not monophyletic. The hummingbirds form 9 principal clades: the topazes and jacobins, the hermits, the mangoes, the coquettes, the brilliants, the giant hummingbird (Patagona gigas), the mountaingems, the bees, and the emeralds.[9] The topazes and jacobins combined have the oldest break up with the rest of the hummingbirds. The hummingbird family has the 1/3-best range of species of any hen circle of relatives (after the tyrant flycatchers and the tanagers).[9][15]

Fossil hummingbirds are recognised from the Pleistocene of Brazil and the Bahamas, but neither has yet been scientifically defined, and fossils and subfossils of a few extant species are regarded. Until recently, older fossils had now not been securely identifiable as the ones of hummingbirds.

In 2004, Gerald Mayr diagnosed two 30-million-year-vintage hummingbird fossils. The fossils of this primitive hummingbird species, named Eurotrochilus inexpectatus ("unexpected European hummingbird"), had been sitting in a museum drawer in Stuttgart; they were unearthed in a clay pit at Wiesloch–Frauenweiler, south of Heidelberg, Germany, and, because hummingbirds were assumed to have by no means happened out of doors the Americas, were now not recognized to be hummingbirds till Mayr took a more in-depth take a look at them.[14][16]

Fossils of birds not genuinely assignable to either hummingbirds or a related extinct circle of relatives, the Jungornithidae, were discovered at the Messel pit and in the Caucasus, dating from 35 to forty million years in the past; this indicates that the split between those lineages indeed came about round that time. The regions in which these early fossils have been found had a climate pretty similar to that of the northern Caribbean or southernmost China throughout that point. The largest remaining mystery at gift is what passed off to hummingbirds within the roughly 25 million years between the primitive Eurotrochilus and the current fossils. The amazing morphological diversifications, the lower in size, and the dispersal to the Americas and extinction in Eurasia all happened in the course of this timespan. DNA–DNA hybridization consequences suggest that the primary radiation of South American hummingbirds occurred as a minimum partially within the Miocene, a few 12 to thirteen million years in the past, for the duration of the uplifting of the northern Andes.[17]

In 2013, a 50-million-yr-vintage chook fossil unearthed in Wyoming became found to be a predecessor to both hummingbirds and swifts earlier than the groups diverged.[18]Evolution[edit]

Hummingbirds are concept to have cut up from different individuals of Apodiformes, the insectivorous swifts (circle of relatives Apodidae) and treeswifts (circle of relatives Hemiprocnidae), about 42 million years ago, probable in Eurasia.[9] Despite their cutting-edge New World distribution, the earliest regarded species of hummingbird are acknowledged from the early Oligocene (Rupelian ~34–28 million years in the past) of Europe, belonging to the genus Eurotrochilus, which may be very similar in its morphology to modern hummingbirds.[sixteen][19][20] A phylogenetic tree unequivocally suggests that cutting-edge hummingbirds originated in South America, with the remaining commonplace ancestor of all residing hummingbirds dwelling around 22 million years ago.[nine]

A map of the hummingbird circle of relatives tree – reconstructed from evaluation of 284 of the arena's 338 regarded species – indicates fast diversification from 22 million years in the past.[21] Hummingbirds fall into nine important clades – the topazes, hermits, mangoes, brilliants, coquettes, the giant hummingbird, mountaingems, bees, and emeralds – defining their relationship to nectar-bearing flowering plant life and the birds' persevered unfold into new geographic regions.[21][8][nine][22]

While all hummingbirds depend on flower nectar to gas their excessive metabolisms and hovering flight, coordinated modifications in flower and invoice form stimulated the formation of recent species of hummingbirds and flowers. Due to this tremendous evolutionary sample, as many as one hundred forty hummingbird species can coexist in a particular location, including the Andes range.[21]

The hummingbird evolutionary tree suggests one key evolutionary component seems to had been an altered taste receptor that enabled hummingbirds to are trying to find nectar.[23]

The Andes Mountains appear like a in particular rich surroundings for hummingbird evolution due to the fact diversification happened simultaneously with mountain uplift over the past 10 million years.[21] Hummingbirds stay in dynamic diversification inhabiting ecological regions throughout South America, North America, and the Caribbean, indicating an enlarging evolutionary radiation.[21]

Within the identical geographic place, hummingbird clades co-advanced with nectar-bearing plant clades, affecting mechanisms of pollination.[24][25] The identical is genuine for the sword-billed hummingbird (Ensifera ensifera), one of the morphologically most intense species, and considered one of its predominant meals plant clades (Passiflora section Tacsonia).[26]

Violet-tailed sylph resting on a department in northwestern Ecuador

Sexual dimorphism displayed in violet-tailed sylph male (top) and lady (bottom)Sexual dimorphisms[edit]