Hummingbirds

Hummingbirds are birds from the Americas that constitute the family Trochilidae. They are
among the smallest of birds, most species measuring 7.513 cm (35 in) in length. Indeed, the
smallest extant bird species is a hummingbird, the 5 cm (2.0 in) bee hummingbird weighing
less than 2.0 g (0.07 oz).

They are known as hummingbirds because of the humming sound created by their beating
wings which flap at high frequencies audible to humans. They hover in mid-air at rapid wing-
flapping rates, which vary from around 12 beats per second in the largest species, to in excess
of 80 in some of the smallest. Of those species that have been measured in wind tunnels, their
top speed exceeds 15 m/s (54 km/h; 34 mph) and some species can dive at speeds in excess of
22 m/s.[1][2]

Hummingbirds have the highest metabolism of any homeothermic animal.[3] To conserve

energy when food is scarce, and nightly when not foraging, they can go into torpor, a state
similar to hibernation, slowing metabolic rate to 1/15th of its normal rate.[4]

A map of the hummingbird family treereconstructed from analysis of 284 of the world's
338 known speciesshows rapid diversification from 22 million years ago.[5] Hummingbirds
fall into nine main clades, the Topazes, Hermits, Mangoes, Brilliants, Coquettes, Patagona,
Mountain Gems, Bees, and Emeralds, defining their relationship to nectar-bearing flowering
plants and the birds' continued spread into new geographic areas.[5][6][7][8]

While all hummingbirds depend on flower nectar to fuel their high metabolisms and hovering
flight, coordinated changes in flower- and bill shape stimulated the formation of new species
of hummingbirds and plants. Due to this exceptional evolutionary pattern, as many as 140
hummingbird species can coexist in a specific region, such as the Andes range.[5]

The hummingbird evolutionary tree shows ancestral hummingbirds splitting from

insectivorous swifts (family Apodidae) and treeswifts (family Hemiprocnidae) about 42
million years ago, probably in Eurasia.[5] One key evolutionary factor appears to be an altered
taste receptor that enabled hummingbirds to seek nectar.[9] By 22 million years ago the
ancestral species of current hummingbirds became established in South America, where
environmental conditions stimulated further diversification.[5]

The Andes Mountains appear to be a particularly rich environment for hummingbird

evolution because diversification occurred simultaneously with mountain uplift over the past
10 million years.[5] Hummingbirds remain in dynamic diversification inhabiting ecological
regions across South America, North America, and the Caribbean, indicating an enlarging
evolutionary radiation.[5]

Within the same geographic region, hummingbird clades co-evolved with nectar-bearing plant
clades, affecting mechanisms of pollination.[10][11] The same is true for the sword-billed
hummingbird (Ensifera ensifera), one of the morphologically most extreme species, and one
of its main food plant clades (Passiflora section Tacsonia).[12]

In traditional taxonomy, hummingbirds are placed in the order Apodiformes, which also
contains the swifts. However, some taxonomists have separated them into their own order, the
Trochiliformes. Hummingbirds' wing bones are hollow and fragile, making fossilization
difficult and leaving their evolutionary history poorly documented. Though scientists theorize
that hummingbirds originated in South America, where species diversity is greatest, possible
ancestors of extant hummingbirds may have lived in parts of Europe to what is southern
Russia today.[24]

Between 325 and 340 species of hummingbirds are described, depending on taxonomic
viewpoint, divided into two subfamilies, the hermits (subfamily Phaethornithinae, 34 species
in six genera), and the typical hummingbirds (subfamily Trochilinae, all the others). However,
recent phylogenetic analyses suggest that this division is slightly inaccurate, and that there are
nine major clades of hummingbirds: the topazes and jacobins, the hermits, the mangoes, the
coquettes, the brilliants, the giant hummingbird (Patagona gigas), the mountain-gems, the
bees, and the emeralds.[6] The topazes and jacobins combined have the oldest split with the
rest of the hummingbirds. The hummingbird family has the second-greatest number of species
of any bird family (after the tyrant flycatchers).

Fossil hummingbirds are known from the Pleistocene of Brazil and the Bahamas; however,
neither has yet been scientifically described, and fossils and subfossils of a few extant species
are known. Until recently, older fossils had not been securely identifiable as those of
hummingbirds.

In 2004, Dr Gerald Mayr of the Senckenberg Museum in Frankfurt am Main identified two
30-million-year-old hummingbird fossils.[25] The fossils of this primitive hummingbird
species, named Eurotrochilus inexpectatus ("unexpected European hummingbird"), had been
sitting in a museum drawer in Stuttgart; they had been unearthed in a clay pit at Wiesloch
Frauenweiler, south of Heidelberg, Germany, and because it was assumed that hummingbirds
never occurred outside the Americas, were not recognized to be hummingbirds until Mayr
took a closer look at them.