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Hummingbird Evolution Is Booming
This hummingbird is one of many species adapted to the
ecosystems of the Andes.
The successf ul, 22 million-year-old group could double in its
number of species bef ore leveling of f
Hummingbirds took just 22 million years to diversif y f rom a
single common ancestor into 338 tiny, colorf ul species. And
they have not f inished yet.
Evolutionary biologist Jim McGuire of the University of
Calif ornia, Berkeley, and his collaborators have f ound that
although some hummingbird groups have saturated the
available space in their environments, others are still
developing into new species at an extraordinary rate. By
comparing their rates of speciation and extinction, McGuire's
team calculated that the number of hummingbird species
could double bef ore reaching an equilibrium in the next several million years. The
results are published in Current Biology.
This is unique evidence of one of the most spectacular known examples of an incomplete adaptive
radiation, says Juan Francisco Ornelas, an evolutionary biologist at the Institute of Ecology in Xalapa,
Mexico. ('Adaptive radiation' is biologists' term f or a rapid dif f erentiation into distinct species.)
Hummingbirds are only f ound in the New World, and the majority of species live in South America. McGuires
team carried out the largest-ever study of the group's evolution by comparing DNA f rom 284 species.
Its impressive, says Robb Brumf ield, a geneticist at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. The
samples they used are the product of 30-plus years of ornithologists lugging nitrogen tanks and collecting
in remote regions of Central and South America. The researchers collected tissue samples and needed to
keep them f rozen to allow f or DNA sequencing.
Fast workers
The analysis showed that hummingbirds f all into nine major lineages, which have diversif ied f rom each
other in South America over the past 22 million years. But they f irst diverged f rom a sister group the
swif ts around 42 million years ago, and f ossils suggest that this split must have happened in Eurasia.
Thats a pretty big gap! says McGuire. Hummingbirds cannot f ly across oceans, so they must have
travelled overland, crossing a land bridge over the Bering Strait into North America bef ore heading south.
Once they reached South America they radiated dramatically especially in the Andes. These mountains
represent just 7% of the land area in the Americas, but they are home to 40% of hummingbird species.
Many of these must have arisen within the past 10 million years. This was the time when the Andes started
rapidly rising, which suggests a possible role of the mountains in stimulating diversif ication.
The Andes are kind of the worst place to be a hummingbird, says McGuire. These birds have super-high
metabolic rates and oxygen availability is low. Its also harder to hover because of the reduced air density.
And yet, theyre up there doing it. Although some insects are known to f orage at high elevations, he says
that there are relatively f ew insects in the cold, high mountains, leaving room f or hummingbirds to take their
place pollinating f lowers. The mountains also provide a smorgasbord of habitats, f rom isolated valleys to
steep slopes with rapidly changing climates. Hummingbirds are well suited to exploit such niches.
But Ornelas says that McGuire and his team overstate the importance of the Andes environments. Judging
f rom the bright colors, elaborate ornaments, spectacular courtship displays and complex calls typical of
hummingbirds, sexual selection has almost certainly played a major part in their evolution.
Either way, hummingbirds are producing new species at a decelerating pace, probably because they are
running out of space or ecological niches to f ill. But McGuire f ound that some lineages have diversif ied 15
times f aster than others, and and still maintain an elevated pace. The rates are all over the place, he says.
Even though ecological space is starting to run out, theres still room f or more species.
This article is reproduced with permission f rom the magazine Nature. The article was f irst published on April
3, 2014.