Abstract
Severe climates provide excellent opportunities to study natural selection in a study population, particularly when surviving and non-surviving individuals are directly observed. Classic examples include the effects of cold, rainy weather on hirundines that can forage only when weather conditions allow flying insects to be active. Previous studies have demonstrated the effects of natural selection on wing and tail morphologies. However, these studies focused on breeding grounds, thus it was difficult to distinguish foraging costs, mating efforts, and migration costs. In the current study, we compared wing and tail morphologies between individuals that survived and those that died during a severe, rainy winter in the Pacific Swallow, Hirundo tahitica, a short-tailed non-migratory hirundine. We found that survivors had longer wings than non-survivors. In addition, survivors had shorter tails than non-survivors after controlling for the correlation with wing length. No significant differences in the keel or bill sizes were found between the two groups with and without controlling for other variables, indicating that selection on body size or foraging apparatus should be negligible. These results indicated that selection favors Pacific Swallows with relatively short tails during foraging, which provides an insight into the evolution of the diverse tail length in hirundines.
Zusammenfassung
Natürliche Selektion bei Flügel- und Schwanzmorphologie der Südseeschwalbe
Harsche Klimabedingungen bieten hervorragende Gelegenheiten, die natürliche Selektion an einer Studienpopulation zu untersuchen, speziell wenn Überleben beziehungsweise Nichtüberleben der Individuen direkt beobachtet werden. Zu den klassischen Beispielen gehört der Einfluss kalten, regnerischen Wetters auf Schwalben, die nur unter Wetterbedingungen jagen können, die es Fluginsekten gestatten, aktiv zu sein. Frühere Studien konnten die Auswirkungen der natürlichen Selektion auf Flügel- und Schwanzmorphologie zeigen. Allerdings konzentrierten sich diese Untersuchungen bisher auf die Brutgebiete und es war somit schwer, zwischen den Kosten für Nahrungssuche, Partnersuche und Zug zu unterscheiden. In der vorliegenden Arbeit verglichen wir die Flügel- und Schwanzmorphologie von überlebenden Individuen der Südseeschwalbe Hirundo tahitica, einer kurzschwänzigen, nicht ziehenden Schwalbenart, mit der anderer Individuen, welche in einem strengen, regnerischen Winter umkamen. Es zeigte sich, dass die Überlebenden längere Flügel hatten als die Nichtüberlebenden. Außerdem hatten die Überlebenden, unter Berücksichtigung der Korrelation mit der Flügellänge, kürzere Schwänze als die Nichtüberlebenden. Es gab keine signifikanten Unterschiede zwischen den beiden Gruppen bezüglich der Größe von Brustbein und Schnabel, weder mit noch ohne Berücksichtigung anderer Variablen, was darauf hindeutet, dass die Selektion auf Körpergröße oder den Nahrungsaufnahmeapparat zu vernachlässigen sein sollte. Unsere Ergebnisse zeigen, dass Südseeschwalben mit relativ kurzen Schwänzen bei der Futtersuche einen Selektionsvorteil haben, was wiederum Einblicke in die Evolution unterschiedliche Schwanzlängen bei Schwalben gestattet.
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Acknowledgements
We greatly appreciate all the house owners who allowed us to study Pacific Swallows at their homes. We also thank Dr Taku Mizuta for managing our field study. We appreciate Dr Nobuyuki Kutsukake and the members of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Studies of Biosystems, Sokendai. We thank Dr Yohei Terai and Takahiro Kato for their technical support in the laboratory experiments. M. H. was supported by a Research Fellowship of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (15J10000). We thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments that helped improve this manuscript.
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Communicated by F. Bairlein.
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Hasegawa, M., Arai, E. Natural selection on wing and tail morphology in the Pacific Swallow. J Ornithol 158, 851–858 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-017-1446-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-017-1446-7