The close relationship between hummingbirds and flowers

2003/04/25 Elhuyar Zientzia

• Biologia
• Botanika
• Eboluzioa
• Zoologia

The appearance of the Kolibrien peaks and some floral varieties have evolved together in the Caribbean, but, as with the Darwin txontes, they have made it from the island to the island differently. This appears in an article in the journal Science. According to the authors of the article, the pressure of selection in these islands is very high, so they constitute an ideal “natural laboratory” to analyze mutual evolution.

According to a previous study, the purple hummingbird of the island of St. Lucia likes a variety of the plant called Heliconia hibai, while the female chooses another variety of the same species and another species that the male discards:
H. Caribbean.

In current research, the hummingbirds and plants of the island of Dominica have been studied, where the opposite occurs: in the lower part of the island there are two varieties of plant H. caribea, one by sex, while in the upper part only the male hits the plant of H.ibai.

The shape of each of the varieties of the heliconia plant corresponds to the shape of the peaks of each sex, which is related to the amount of nectar that
the colibrias can take. In view of this, the researchers conclude that there has been a mutual evolution.

Photo: Phil Savoie/Science