Sky Island Sunbirds Have Been Singing The Same Tunes For One Million Years
Preparation The “sky island sunbirds” are from the Nectariniidae family and are known for their colorful appearance and nectar diets (similar to hummingbirds). But their history of singing specific songs in the mountains of East Africa is one-of-a-kind, as their singing patterns date back nearly one million years, based on new findings published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B. They appear throughout Africa and Asia and are “little jewels that appear before you,” Rauri Bowie, the study’s senior author, a professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a curator in the school’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, said in a statement....