What looks like a complicated phylogeny tree actually shows something quite simple and elegant. This is a reconstruction of the evolution of carotenoid pigments in bird feathers. The orange colours represent birds lineages that have carotenoid feathers and the likelihood of their ancestors with cartenoid fathers. Researchers revealed 2 major findings from this study: 1) 95 - 236 living bird families had species with carotenoid-created colors, more than doubled the previous count, and suggests that the ability to express these brilliant pigments evolved multiple times through bird evolutionary history. 2) Carotenoid colours may have first evolved in birds around 56 myo. Mostly likely passeriforms, or “perching birds”, related to the majority of bird species living today. This is 94 million years after Archaeopteryx, the first bird. Carotenoids are feather colours not created by the animal itself, but by the food and minerals it consumes. Flamingos pink colour is created by carotenoids – organic pigments present in the algae and tiny crustaceans flamingos sieve from the water. Rather than breaking down in the birds’ stomachs, though, the pigments enter the bloodstream and get sucked up into feathers as they form. How pink a flamingo is depends on what the bird is eating. phenomena.nationalgeographic/2014/06/27/tracing-the-roots-of-beautiful-bird-hues/
Posted on: Sun, 29 Jun 2014 03:27:50 +0000
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