Online repositories of photographs and videos provide insights into the evolution of skilled hindlimb movements in birds

The ability to manipulate objects with limbs has evolved repeatedly among land tetrapods. Several selective forces have been proposed to explain the emergence of forelimb manipulation, however, work has been largely restricted to mammals, which prevents the testing of evolutionary hypotheses in a co...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Communications biology 2023-08, Vol.6 (1), p.781-781, Article 781
Main Authors: Gutiérrez-Ibáñez, Cristián, Amaral-Peçanha, Clara, Iwaniuk, Andrew N., Wylie, Douglas R., Baron, Jerome
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
631/181
631/601/18
Biology
Biomedical and Life Sciences
Birds
Diet
Evolution
Feet
Grasping
Life Sciences
Limbs
Motor skill
Niches
Phylogeny
Skills
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Summary:The ability to manipulate objects with limbs has evolved repeatedly among land tetrapods. Several selective forces have been proposed to explain the emergence of forelimb manipulation, however, work has been largely restricted to mammals, which prevents the testing of evolutionary hypotheses in a comprehensive evolutionary framework. In birds, forelimbs have gained the exclusive function of flight, with grasping transferred predominantly to the beak. In some birds, the feet are also used in manipulative tasks and appear to share some features with manual grasping and prehension in mammals, but this has not been systematically investigated. Here we use large online repositories of photographs and videos to quantify foot manipulative skills across a large sample of bird species (>1000 species). Our results show that a complex interaction between niche, diet and phylogeny drive the evolution of manipulative skills with the feet in birds. Furthermore, we provide strong support for the proposition that an arboreal niche is a key element in the evolution of manipulation in land vertebrates. Our systematic comparison of foot use in birds provides a solid base for understanding morphological and neural adaptations for foot use in birds, and for studying the convergent evolution of manipulative skills in birds and mammals. A large-scale citizen science approach reveals that a complex interaction between niche, diet and phylogeny drive the evolution of manipulative skill with the feet in birds.
ISSN:2399-3642
2399-3642
DOI:10.1038/s42003-023-05151-z