Northern giant hummingbird

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Northern giant hummingbird
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Clade: Strisores
Order: Apodiformes
Family: Trochilidae
Genus: Patagona
Species:
P. chaski
Binomial name
Patagona chaski
(Williamson et al., 2024)

The northern giant hummingbird (Patagona chaski) is the largest species of hummingbird and one of two species of the genus Patagona.[1][2]

It and the sympatric southern giant hummingbird (P. gigas) were once considered the same species, i.e., the giant hummingbird, but genomic analysis shows that the two species diverged between 2.1 and 3.4 million years ago, in the late Pliocene.[1]

A single F1 male hybrid between the two species has been recorded in a study that collected a sample of 101 individuals, suggesting that hybridization occurs regularly between the species. However, high genome-wide FST between the two species shows that introgression and backcrossing of first generation hybrids occurs very rarely in nature, such that there is no gene flow occurring between the two species.[1]

References[edit]

  1. ^ a b c Williamson, Jessie L.; Gyllenhaal, Ethan F.; Bauernfeind, Selina M.; Bautista, Emil; Baumann, Matthew J.; Gadek, Chauncey R.; Marra, Peter P.; Ricote, Natalia; Valqui, Thomas; Bozinovic, Francisco; Singh, Nadia D.; Witt, Christopher C. (2024-05-21). "Extreme elevational migration spurred cryptic speciation in giant hummingbirds". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 121 (21). doi:10.1073/pnas.2313599121. ISSN 0027-8424.
  2. ^ "South America's Giant Hummingbird is Actually Two Species". Sci News. 2024-05-13. Retrieved 2024-05-20.