Fun with Science Club®


			Birds evolve to take advantage of new habitats. Carrie Straight 05.18.01 On islands far from the mainland there tend to be species that are different from any others throughout the world. For islands like the Hawaiian Islands, there are many unique bird species. Many of the different species that exist today in Hawaii probably came from a few birds that flew there. Because of the limited species of birds, habitats normally filled on the mainland were open and ready for a new species to take advantage of them. By comparative study of museum specimens and living birds in the wild, scientists discovered that the Hawaiian honeycreepers (family Drepaniidae) took advantage of the open habitats and environments on the islands and new species evolved to use these habitats. An example comes from the birds in the genus Hemignathus. Hemignathus obscurus had a large curved bill to help it eat insects and probe around in bark and crevices. Another species H. lucidus had a long upper part of the bill (upper mandible) but a bigger lower part of the bill (lower mandible), which allowed it to pry bark off trees to look for insects. In the third species of Hemignathus, H. wilsoni, the lower mandible is straight and thick. It uses the lower mandible as a hammer or chisel as a woodpecker would. These species of birds all came from one common ancestor, but changed to take advantage of resources that other birds were not using.


			Amadon, Dean. 1947. Ecology and the evolution of some Hawaiian birds. Evolution 1(1/2): 63-68.