A team of researchers from the University of Arizona and Yale University in the US examined the range of colors in birds’ feathers.
“We give them titles like ‘mountain jewels’ or ‘sapphires'”
The study, published in the peer-reviewed scientific journal Nature, found that the range of colors in hummingbird feathers exceeds the total color diversity of all other bird species combined.
Studying 116 species of hummingbirds, the researchers focused on the blazing colors produced by microscopic structures in their feathers.
According to the findings, these feathers produce a rainbow of transient colors, much like a thin layer of oil on the surface of water.
Gabriela Venable, lead author of the study, said, “We give them adjectives like ‘mountain jewels’ or ‘sapphires’. One of the things that attracted me to them as a child was their colorfulness.”
Venable, who was an undergraduate student in ecology and evolutionary biology at Yale University when the study was completed, told Forbes:
“I knew I wanted to study hummingbirds for my senior thesis, so I asked my advisor, Dr. Richard Prum, for advice on an interesting topic to study about these birds.
In the research, the team led by Professor Prum examined skin samples and more than 1,600 feather fragments from 114 different hummingbird species at the Yale Peabody Museum and the American Museum of Natural History.
The samples used in the study included about 33 percent of all living hummingbird species and 60 percent of all hummingbird genera.
The color measurements were taken from the birds’ backs, tails, wings, bellies and throats.
These measurements were then compared with a data set of 965 feather fragments from 111 other bird species, including penguins, finches and parrots.
“Most of my work is museum-based, it’s hard for me to imagine what it would mean to do research without them!” said Prof. Prum:
“But museums make a critical and ongoing contribution to our understanding of the importance and diversity of life.
