Reader Richard, who lives near Cape Town, South Africa, sent some photos he took of a malachite sunbird, and noted this:
A Nectarinia famosa visits our garden each year when these flowers emerge.
Sunbirds, including this species, are the Old World equivalent of hummingbirds: an example of convergent evolution. They make their living, like hummingbirds, by hovering before flowers and sipping the nectar. While working on São Tomé, I sometimes encountered one of the two endemic species there, the Giant Sunbird (much prized on birders’ life lists; the other species is the Principe Sunbird).
Looking for videos showing this bird, I found a creationist one showing that the species helps prove God! One plant (the “rat’s tail”) apparently has evolved perches for the sunbird, enabling the animal to access its nectar!
As the video’s narrator notes (while chuckling about the stupidity of evolutionists):
“If evolution was true, how could such a plant survive until it could learn enough about its pollinator—and about genetics—to evolve a special growth just for its pollinator. Heh! This sounds like a silly question, but if evolution is true, that question must be answered, and answered scientifically.”
The narrator says this is a “silly question,” and is best answered by invoking God’s creation of the sunbird for the plant, and the plant for the sunbird. But in so doing, he describes the crucial experiment that actually shows the evolutionary advantage for a plant to evolve a perch. This is one of the most bizarre creationist arguments I’ve ever seen, since the evolutionary pressure to evolve a perch is so obvious that there’s no need to even think of divine creation. Any listener who knew even a bit about natural selection would see that the evolved perch is no mystery.
You can find several videos of the malachite sunbird in the wild at this site.
I have a lovely cat photo – how do I send it in? Yes, I am stupid about computers. Just advice, please.
“And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask of Google, believing, ye shall receive.” (Matthew 21:22)
Reblogged this on Mark Solock Blog.
Just to clarify – the creationist is wondering how the plant developed the perch quick enough in order for pollination to occur, thus allow for survival of the species? Am I understanding this correctly? Is he assuming the perch is necessary for the plant’s survival, not advantageous?
He means that if the evolution happened (which is indeed a slow process), how did the plant survive until it did. So yeah, he thinks it is necessary for the plant’s survival, rather than advantageous, as per him.
The plant grows outside the range of the bird even now, and gets along fine with other pollinators, which may or may not use the “perch” anyway. See my comment at 7.
I am on your side, anyway 🙂
Yes, sorry if I wasn’t clear. I meant to amplify your point by showing that what he was trying to do wouldn’t work anyway. The plant survives nicely without the bird.
🙂
There is amazing film from Discovery channel about ” Feather evolution ” and ” Dinosaur to bird evolution ” on Youtube djarm67 channel.
Embryology shows that a domestic hen embryo has the potential to make a tail 15 vertebra long- similar to archaeopteryx , also teeth buds in the beak. Hans Larsson of McGill University thinks that it could be possible to reverse engineer an Emu to look a lot like it’s dinosaur ancestor.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-B2c79tq-Do
Does the video have a mistake at 2min 26s; talking about the chick embryo in question being only 1.5 days old ( from egg laying )
Cool. I think also birds are thought to have a vestigial 4th finger on their hands, best seen in embryos.
Thanks for that link, I’m enjoying the evolution of feathers at the moment.
Hi Marella:
Any chance that you are reading “Feathers : The Evolution of a Natural Miracle” by Thor Hanson? If so, could you give us a capsule review? I have it on my wish list, but only because of the title; I don’t really know anything about the book. Thanks!
One issue about this sort of thing that has been bugging me. Are the sunbirds really best described as showing ‘convergent’ evolution to hummingbirds, or is this an example of ‘parallel’ evolution? Parallel evolution is where related taxons continue to evolve similar adaptations, using related sets of genes.
Also using homologous structures, like the beaks and tongues in this case.
Sunbirds and hummingbirds aren’t that closely related. Sunbirds are songbirds, while hummingbirds are not; they are more closely related to the swifts. So I think the answer to your question is that this is convergent evolution.
However I’m not sure whether convergent and parallel evolution are truly separate phenomena or rather terms of convenience – perhaps someone else can enlighten us?
I would prefer it if parallel evolution was used just for closely related groups, but unfortunately it is apparently not. So I see instances in textbooks and Wikipedia where the similarity of cactuses and euphorbs are described as parallel evolution, wolves and dingos (for crying out loud) described as parallel evolution. I would prefer these to be considered convergent, even though the structures involved are homologous, and possibly also some genes.
there is no formal distinction between ‘parallel’ and ‘convergent’ evolution, merely the relativistic notion of ‘how far apart’ the lineages are, with convergence being used when we are considering well-separated lineages, parallel evolution, when they are fairly close. But how close does ‘close’ have to be to be “close”? The classic convergence is dolphin – ichthyosaur – shark etc.— certainly widely separated lineages. But does the fact that hummers and sunbirds are both bird lineages mean they should be designated “parallel”? It’s your taste, I’d say. For me they are widely separated bird lineages, so I’d call them convergent.
And, by the way, sunbirds don’t habitually hover, they perch.
what a lame video, are children really supposed to be watching that?
Creationists hate it when the rest of us point out that they’re as ignorant as the day is long, yet they are blatant about calling attention to the fact that they are.
Why don’t they know that this sort of flower cluster (a glomerule) is widespread in the mint family? It didn’t evolve as a sunbird perch in Leonotus nor did any “God” create it specially as a “perch”. Numerous related plants with pollinators that don’t use the glomerule as a perch are still glomerule bearers. Weird, huh? Here’s a very relevant example:
http://www.californianativeflora.com/wp-content/gallery/hummingbird-sage/img_0559.jpg
Salvia spathacea is a hummingbird pollinated species in California with well developed “perches” like those of Leonotus — but hummingbirds hover and probably couldn’t even effectively access the nectar if they landed on the “perch”. The creationist “perch” isn’t a perch it’s an inflorescence form that evolved for other reasons but which can be used as a perch by some flower visitors that need one.
Sorry. Spelling issue — Leonotis, not Leonotus.
Note two other things:
1) The species in the creationist image looks to be the widespread weedy L. nepetifolia which grows far beyond the range of the Malachite sunbird. If it’s successful in Mexico (introduced) and India (native) with no sunbirds, doesn’t that punch a small hole in the creationist “special created relationship” hypothesis?
2) The plant being happily used by the sunbird in Richard’s photos from South Africa is New Zealand flax — introduced to S.A. from guess where? Note the lack of any sort of specialized “perch”/glomerule but the birds seem to be getting along with it fine, even though their species had never seen one of these plants prior to (probably) the 20th century. Flexible behavior, and no special “God” created relationship!
Also, the picture in the “video” is not representative of the flowerless stem that actually is the “perch” in question. This story made quite a splash at the time, and this is the usual picture that accompanied it:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-14788701
Creationists must be awfully busy explaining all the myriad instances of ornithophily.
One important part of this story is that sunbirds don’t hover in front of flowers like hummingbirds do.
Ah! Thank you.
This is even more confused than I’d realized. Two completely different and only very distantly related plants are mixed up in the video. There were parts of the video I couldn’t quite make sense of, and this explains why. The spikes are on Babiana while the spheres refer to Leonotis.
But, all green things are the same “kind” I suppose.
And this was supposed to be in response to Diane. I managed to break the link by checking other websites while composing.
As an aside, the Central/South American plant genus Puya contains species that have inflorescences without perches (which are mostly pollinated by hovering hummingbirds), and species with perches (mostly pollinated by perching birds).
The most intriguing sunbird perch is that of Babiana ringens. The plant is apparently under selective pressure to bloom low to the ground, but sunbirds won’t land on the ground. Therefore it has a branched inflorescence, with flowers only on the ground-level branch and the upper part of the stalk modified into a bare perch.
See here, for example:
http://aobblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/sunbird.jpg
heh. Yes, that was my first thought, too – that plant in the first clip is NZ flax, Phormium tenax.
Of course, NZ does have a group of native honey-eaters (bellbird, tui) who feed from and pollinate the plant. But I’ve seen much smaller birds like the introduced sparrow getting into the flowers quite happily too.