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Science

Looking at Birds in a Whole New Spectrum 34

Posted by timothy from the ladies-gentlemen-and-distingushed-birds dept.
Shipud writes "Historically, bird species are classified using may different indicators, including plumage colors. Also, plumage variation has figured heavily in description of similarity between species. In a recent article in PNAS, Robert Bleiweiss shows that if we look in the ultra violet spectrum, birds species which seem similar, or are even considered related based on plumage colors, appear quite different. Quite a few theories regarding supposedly sympatric (sibling) species would have to be re-checked now. And yes, birds can see in the near UV spectrum, which is invisible to humans."
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Looking at Birds in a Whole New Spectrum More

Looking at Birds in a Whole New Spectrum

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  • ..using other parts of the spectrum? There's just so much we have left to learn about the world..
  • They also look differently in the electromagnetic spectrum.
  • I'm sure there are many many ways we could look at different species. Through a sepia tone filter we could surmize that penguins are siblings of seagulls. We could speculate for ever.

    While this is interesting, it really doesn't appear to me to make sense to try to determine lineage and ancestry via visual means. I'm sure there is a lot of info we can learn in other areas using this technique.

    However, why use this for lineage/ancestry when we have DNA that, rather than speculate about the pretty colors we ca

    • The important thing to remember is that birds see in the near ultraviolet, so when we look at birds in that manner, we are seeing them as they see themselves and each other.
      • I wasn't contradicting the fact that it is interesting to be able to look at birds in a manner closer to how they see themselves.

        Of course that is not pointless.

        The article however leads one to believe that this will allow them to properly distinguish relations between species, which may or may not be true. Regardless, it is not a known way to do this, and there is another way that we _know_ can do this.

        As another poster mentioned, this could be used to back up DNA findings.

        Now that I've argued again what t

        • The article however leads one to believe that this will allow them to properly distinguish relations between species, which may or may not be true.

          Well, this pretty much dovetails (forgive the pun), into my earlier post. It stands to reason that examining birds in the near-UV to which they are sensitive will help to more properly distinguish relations between species, since this is one of the mechanisms the birds themselves use.

          From TFA:

          I describe an avian example of an interspecific phenomenon in which

    • However, why use this for lineage/ancestry when we have DNA that, rather than speculate about the pretty colors we can't really see, we can actually make some scientific qualifications about.


      Having a "UV-spectra"-organized taxology (is that the word?) for birds might serve to back up/support industrial DNA techniques.

      or, in short, "you got my eyes!"
    • DNA can only tell the difference between known species that are very closely related. Many birds have diverse plumage in, what we think, is the same species. Birds pay alot of attention to plumage when picking a mate, the FTA gives an example of how speciation may come about because of UV's role in sexual selection. The research should be followed up to see how large UV's role is. Maybe it will settle some long running Taxonomy disputes but there needs to be more research into the suspect breeding habits, T
  • Its been known for over a decade that flowers have a surprising degree of UV variability, to which pollinators [but not humans] are sensative.
    e.g.:
    http://www.naturfotograf.com/UV_flowers_list.html [naturfotograf.com]
    http://www.bbg.org/gar2/topics/wildlife/2000su_bum blebees.html [bbg.org]
    • Actually, well over. When I was a kid 30-odd years ago, I had some time-life books with a picture of flowers in UV, showing how the common buttercup wasn't uniformly yellow, but had dark patches on the petals in UV. I'm surprised that nobody spent the time to photograph some other common things in UV, just to see.

      Is this just a case of the difficulty of UV photography (quartz lenses, and expensive filters), or didn't anybody think it was worth the time?
  • Doppler shift may cause the genetic links between african and european swallows to become obfuscated. However, by measuring the relative red shifts, we might finally settle which one is faster...
  • I'm not sure this is what the poster meant, but it is implied by the text! Sympatric species (or more precisely populations...) occupy the same area at a given time. Populations that do not occupy the same area are called allopatric.

    On the other hand, the notion of sibling species refers to a phylogenetic tree, they are species that who share an exclusive most recent commont ancestor. They are more often called sister species.

    So, yes, this new technique could be very useful to distinguish between cryp
  • show's how little we really see as humans. Viewing things under 'alternative' or filtered spectrums helps find all sorts of stuff (think forensics, and not just CSI). It's used to find cracks in materials. In fact, isn't mass spectroscopy used to determine what you're actually looking at based on light wavelength that is absorbed/reflected/diffracted?

    How much of a difference will this actually make in classification, though, since we classify based on sensed differences, size, colors, etc. If we can't see

  • Last night, I saw The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, http://wildparrotsfilm.com/ [wildparrotsfilm.com] again. The red-crested conyers will not mate with a blue-crested conyer. Now I wonder if it's something I can't see...
  • ...our ultravioletly differentiated avian overlords.
  • I remember in a Slashdot story a while back about tetrachromats [wikipedia.org], the idea was floated that humans might someday, using genetic engineering or gene therapy, be given the ability to see in wavelengths previously available only to scientists (and, of course, to Geordi [wikipedia.org]). I think it would be amazingly cool to acquire the ability to see previously hidden details -- of birds, flowers, boobies -- even if it did come at the expense of properly interpreting certain traffic signals [gribblenation.net].

    • Re:Added ability in humans (Score:4, Interesting)

      by shawb ( 16347 ) on Wednesday August 03, 2005 @08:47PM (#13236843)
      There was a student in my high school physics class who could see a bit into the IR. The teacher had a presentation and had something that we shouldn't have been able to see, but the kid could see it. Although I'm guessing that he wasn't tetrachromatic so much as just had a slight offset in the red receptor pigment. I think it would be trivial for a small mutation to change the pigment. IIRC, organic pigments are "tuned" to a particular frequency by a protein chain that hangs off the main cluster which alters the harmonic frequency, similar to how a longer guitar string will have a lower resonant harmonic frequency.

      • I think it would be trivial for a small mutation to change the pigment.

        This raises the question: what selective advantage would IR-sensitive (or UV-sensitive) eyes give you? Colour vision is fascinating stuff indeed - especially to me, being colourblind (just like my brother and grandfather). I envy 'tri-chromats' sometimes, and then an article like this comes out and reminds me that we're all in much the same boat... :-)

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