• New research on famous 'supertramp' bird

    From ScienceDaily@1:317/3 to All on Thu Jan 27 21:30:48 2022
    New research on famous 'supertramp' birds in Southeast Asia offers fresh insights into the evolution of wide-ranging animals

    Date:
    January 27, 2022
    Source:
    Trinity College Dublin
    Summary:
    Beautiful 'supertramp' birds in Southeast Asia are providing
    unique insights into how evolution is linked to flight ability
    and competition.

    New research testing decades-old theories has confirmed that
    the isolating effects of islands impact the evolution of even
    the species most accomplished at colonizing them -- and in some
    surprising ways.

    Among the eye-opening findings is the discovery that these birds
    settle down more readily than would be expected -- once they have
    colonized an island they tend to stay there rather than searching
    for others.



    FULL STORY ========================================================================== Beautiful "supertramp" birds in Southeast Asia are providing
    unique insights into how evolution is linked to flight ability and
    competition. New research testing decades-old theories has confirmed that
    the isolating effects of islands impact the evolution of even the species
    most accomplished at colonising them -- and in some surprising ways.


    ==========================================================================
    The zoologists behind the study, from Trinity College Dublin's School of Natural Sciences, sequenced DNA and took measurements from Island Monarchs (Monarcha cineracens), which are widespread birds that have been studied
    by evolutionary biologists for decades. They compared these to a related
    bird species, the Pale-blue Monarch, which lives in the same region but
    has a different lifestyle.

    Among the eye-opening findings is the discovery that these birds settle
    down more readily than would be expected -- once they have colonised an
    island they tend to stay there rather than searching for others.

    In combination, the work confirms there is still much we don't know
    about these birds, despite their historic importance to scientific theory.

    Fionn O' Marcaigh, first author on the paper and a PhD Candidate in
    Trinity's School of Natural Sciences, said: "This study was a great
    opportunity to work with one of biogeography's 'star species'. The Island Monarch was studied by famous scientist and geographer Jared Diamond
    in the 1970s, when he saw that they occurred on small islands across
    a wide range but were entirely missing from larger islands. He named
    species with this kind of distribution 'supertramps', hypothesising
    that they essentially evolved into specialist island colonisers in
    response to their small islands being so unstable. This hypothesis has
    been influential ever since, but now we're able to test it using modern
    genetic methods and help to evolve it further.

    "We found that even though the Island Monarch is clearly good enough at
    flying to reach these islands in the first place, it doesn't maintain
    this dispersive lifestyle after colonisation. This causes the island populations to diverge from one another, to the point that the Island
    Monarch in our study region is probably a different species to the one
    Diamond worked with, even though they look the same to the eye.

    "Our statistical analyses indicate that this genetic divergence is
    linked to the size, elevation, and isolation of the islands, but we
    found no evidence that the monarchs get physically worse at flying
    between islands. They just choose to stop doing so! "It goes to show how important these island regions are in the evolution of new species. Once
    a bird is living on these little islands so far from everywhere else
    it's just a matter of time before they start to evolve into something new.

    "It seems even supertramp species have to settle down eventually!"
    The research, completed with the support of the Irish Research Council
    and collaborators in Universitas Halu Oleo, has just been published in Frontiers of Biogeography, the journal of the International Biogeography Society.

    The study adds new knowledge to the field of biogeography, the study of
    the distribution of species through space and time. Biogeography has been
    an important part of evolutionary biology since the very beginning as
    both Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace based their theories on it.

    ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by Trinity_College_Dublin. Note:
    Content may be edited for style and length.


    ========================================================================== Journal Reference:
    1. Fionn O' Marcaigh, Darren P. O'Connell, Kangkuso Analuddin,
    Adi Karya,
    Naomi Lawless, Caroline M. McKeon, Niamh Doyle, Nicola M. Marples,
    David J. Kelly. Tramps in transition: genetic differentiation
    between populations of an iconic "supertramp" taxon in the Central
    Indo-Pacific.

    Frontiers of Biogeography, 2022; 0 (0) DOI: 10.21425/F5FBG54512 ==========================================================================

    Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2022/01/220127104225.htm

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