When you’ve ever belly-flopped right into a pool, then you realize: water will be surprisingly laborious if you happen to hit it on the fallacious angle. However many species of kingfishers dive headfirst into water to catch their fishy prey. In a brand new scientific examine within the journal Communications Biology, researchers in contrast the DNA of 30 completely different kingfisher species to zero in on the genes that may assist clarify the birds’ food plan and talent to dive with out sustaining mind harm.
The kind of diving that kingfishers do — what researchers name “plunge-diving” — is an aeronautic feat. “It’s a high-speed dive from air to water, and it’s completed by only a few hen species,” says Chad Eliason, a analysis scientist on the Subject Museum in Chicago and the examine’s first creator. Nevertheless it’s a habits that’s probably dangerous.
“For kingfishers to dive headfirst the way in which they do, they will need to have advanced different traits to maintain them from hurting their brains,” says Shannon Hackett, affiliate curator of birds on the Subject Museum and the examine’s senior creator.
Kingfisher, copyright Dean Eades, from the surfbirds galleries
Not all kingfishers really fish — many species of those birds eat land-dwelling prey like bugs, lizards, and even different kingfishers. Beforehand, co-authors Jenna McCollough and Michael Andersen, researchers from the College of New Mexico, led the crew in utilizing DNA to indicate that the teams of kingfishers that eat fish aren’t every others’ closest kin throughout the kingfisher household tree. That signifies that kingfishers advanced their fishy diets — and the diving talents to acquire them — quite a few separate instances, reasonably than all evolving from one widespread fish-eating ancestor.
“The truth that there are such a lot of transitions to diving is what makes this group each fascinating and highly effective, from a scientific analysis perspective,” says Hackett. “If a trait evolves a large number of various instances independently, which means you’ve got energy to search out an overarching clarification for why that’s.”
For this examine, the researchers — together with co-authors Lauren Mellenthin at the moment at Yale College, however who was an undergraduate intern at Subject Museum on the time this analysis was performed, Taylor Hains on the College of Chicago and Subject Museum, Stacy Pirro at Iridian Genomes, and Michael Anderson and Jenna McCullough on the College of New Mexico — examined the DNA of 30 species of kingfishers, each fish-eating and never.
“To get all of the kingfisher DNA, we used specimens within the Subject Museum’s collections,” says Eliason, who works within the Subject’s Grainger Bioinformatics Middle and Negaunee Integrative Analysis Middle. “When our scientists do fieldwork, they take tissue samples from the hen specimens they accumulate, like items of muscle or liver. These tissue samples are saved on the Subject Museum, frozen in liquid nitrogen, to protect the DNA.”
Within the Subject’s Pritzker DNA Laboratory, the researchers started the method of sequencing full genomes for every of the species, producing your complete genetic code of every hen. From there, they used software program to match the billions of base pairs making up these genomes to search for genetic variations that the diving kingfishers have in widespread.
The scientists discovered that the fish-eating birds had a number of modified genes related to food plan and mind construction. As an example, they discovered mutations within the birds’ AGT gene, which has been related to dietary flexibility in different species, and the MAPT gene, which codes for tau proteins that relate to feeding habits.
Tau proteins assist stabilize tiny constructions contained in the mind, however the accumulation of too many tau proteins could be a dangerous factor. In people, traumatic mind accidents and Alzheimer’s illness are related to a buildup of tau. “I realized quite a bit about tau protein once I was the concussion supervisor of my son’s hockey crew,” says Hackett. “I began to marvel, why don’t kingfishers die as a result of their brains flip to mush? There’s gotta be one thing they’re doing that protects them from the unfavourable influences of repeatedly touchdown on their heads on the water’s floor.”
Hackett suspects that tau proteins could also be one thing of a double-edged sword. “The identical genes that maintain your neurons in your mind in all good and ordered are the issues that fail if you get repeated concussions if you happen to’re a soccer participant or if you happen to get Alzheimer’s,” she says. “My guess is there’s some form of sturdy selective strain on these proteins to guard the birds’ brains in a roundabout way.”
Now that these correlated genomic variations have been recognized, says Hackett, “the following query is, what do the mutations in these birds’ genes do to the proteins which are being produced? What form modifications are there? What’s going on to compensate in a mind for the concussive forces?”
“Now, we all know which of the underlying genes are shifting that assist create the variations that we see throughout the kingfisher household,” says Eliason. “However now that we all know which genes to have a look at, it created extra mysteries. That’s how science works.”
Along with a greater understanding of kingfisher genetics and potential implications for understanding mind accidents, Hackett says that this examine is essential as a result of it highlights the worth of museum collections.
“One of many specimens we bought DNA from on this examine is thirty years outdated. On the time it was collected, we couldn’t do anyplace close to the form of analyses we will do in the present day — we couldn’t even do some of these items 5 years in the past,” says Hackett. “It traces again to the power of particular person specimens to inform new tales by time. And who is aware of what we’ll be capable of study from these specimens sooner or later? That’s why I like museum collections.”
