Catching a giant hummingbird is not easy. The birds that live in the Andes are extremely alert. They notice the slightest changes in their surroundings, interpret them as potential danger and avoid the suspicious place.
However, a team led by Jessie Williamson from Cornell University in the US managed to capture some specimens of Patagona gigas using well-camouflaged nets, equip them with satellite transmitters and also analyze their genome. Like the researchers in the science journal PNAS to report, To their surprise, they found out that there is not just one species of giant hummingbird, but two.
On the outside, the two species look completely the same: both are greenish-brown in color and have the characteristic long hummingbird beak, with which they suck nectar and also eat small insects. And at around 22 centimeters long, both are almost four times larger than the smallest known hummingbird species, the six centimeter long bee elf.
You fly thousands of kilometers and climb more than 4,000 meters in altitude
However, the two giant hummingbird species are completely different in their behavior: One undertakes a strenuous migration every year, during which the animals fly 8,000 kilometers from their breeding grounds in Chile to high-altitude Andean regions in Peru and back again in just a few weeks Cope with an altitude difference of 4100 meters. The other forgoes such adventures and stays in the same place all year round.
Like high-altitude mountaineers, the migrating giant hummingbirds have to give their bodies time to get used to the decreasing oxygen supply as the altitude increases during their flight to Peru. For this reason, they took short breaks in between, “comparable to the acclimatization routines of human mountaineers,” the study authors write PNAS.
Genetically, the two giant hummingbird species “differ from each other as much as chimpanzees differ from bonobos,” says study author Chris Witt of the University of New Mexico, according to a press release. The researchers therefore suggest giving the non-migratory giant hummingbird species a new name and calling it Patagona chaski in the future. “Chaski” means “messenger” in Quechua, the language of many indigenous Andean people. The migratory giant hummingbird species is said to be Patagona gigas be called.
According to genetic analyses, the two giant hummingbird species separated from each other 2.1 to 3.4 million years ago. Chris Witt thinks that it is all the more surprising that no one has noticed that there is not just one species, but two.
Both species meet in the high Andean regions of Peru, where Patagona gigas migrates and Patagona chaski lives permanently. A geographical separation of populations, which is often the reason for the emergence of two different species, cannot therefore have been the reason for the splitting up of giant hummingbirds. The researchers assume that the different migratory behavior was the reason why what was originally one giant hummingbird species evolved into two. The researchers do not know whether the last common ancestor was a migratory bird and part of the population stopped making the long journey at some point, or whether, conversely, some giant hummingbirds started migrating at some point.
It also remains a mystery how the different species of giant hummingbirds behave when they meet each other. Are they fighting each other? Do they keep their distance from each other? Or do they live peacefully together because they don’t even know that they belong to different species?