Evolution of Flight Performance and Phylogeny of Hummingbirds

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DEB-0108555Jimmy McGuireRobert DudleyA grant has been awarded to Drs. Jimmy A. McGuire of Louisiana State University and Robert Dudley of the University of Texas at Austin to investigate the role that morphology and physiology have played in the evolution of flight performance in hummingbirds. More specifically, they will generate a phylogenetic tree describing the species-level genealogy for 300 species of hummingbirds and will then use this genealogy as the framework for comparative analysis. To produce this tree, they will sequence five genes (one mitochondrial and 4 nuclear) and then analyze these genetic data by applying a recently developed model-based method of phylogenetic analysis. In the second component of the project, they are measuring flight performance across the diversity of hummingbirds to evaluate how variation in morphological design affects locomotor performance, and how hummingbirds that occur at high elevation compensate for reduced air density and oxygen content in this aerodynamically challenging environment. The phylogenetic analysis is not only critical for statistical analysis of flight performance data, but will also be invaluable to the larger community of evolutionary biologists that utilize hummingbirds as the "model system" for their own investigations. This work is also of general importance because it will substantially improve current understanding of animal flight by utilizing comparative performance data. These data are extremely difficult to obtain for other vertebrate species, but tractable in hummingbirds because of their use of hovering flight.