“ Diehard birder ” Stephen Gosser was wander in the woods of Western Pennsylvania when he total across a once - in - a - life observation . First , his auricle pick up on the call of a scarlet tanager , an exciting find on its own , known for its blood - ruby plumage and come upon mordant wings , but instead he was met with arose - summit grosbeak .
The wench sang again proving that it was the source of the speech sound , so why was it singing the wrong song ? rip exam by and by confirm the healthy male person was the first - ever document case of ahybridbetween these two species who have been on independent evolutionary trajectories for around 10 million years . Now , it seems that ’s all changed .
“ I love this narration , because it pop with a little mystery and ends with a surprising discovery , ” said David Toews , assistant professor of biota at Penn State lead writer of a study about the discovery , in astatement .
TheScooby - Doorevealof the perplexing bird began with capturing it so blood samples could be read . Using these , they were able-bodied to hold DNA and scat genetic test which could be compared againstbioacousticsanalyses to see how the brute ’s genetic constitution mate up against its phenotype – the name dedicate to an somebody ’s observable characteristic .
“ Something people may not understand is that when we analyze birdsong , we ’re not actually listen to them . We ’re looking at them , ” explained Toews . “ We ’re look at wavelengths of the sound – or the ‘ spectrogram ’ is a more exact term – and we ’re actually assess visual components of a soundwave to analyze the song . ”
From the bioacoustics , it became apparent that the young skirt study to talk from dad in assume the song of a ruby-red tanager despite looking like mum , a rose - breasted grossbeak . This decision was supported by genomic sequence which revealed that when it came to mom and dad , she was a grossbeak , he was a tanager ( can we make it any more obvious ? )
“ We used the same tools that we ’ve used to identify other crossbreed , but we typically have more ambiguous answers that are a bit more esoteric , ” concluded Toews .
“ In this pillowcase , we distinguish the species . We know who the parent were , and we have a passably square conclusion at the end . I find this story resonates with more than just your average ornithological grind like myself . ”
The subject was issue inEcology and Evolution .
