News & Events

Evolution of bird-of-paradise sex chromosomes revealed

02.04.2019

Birds-of-paradise are a group of songbird species, and are known for their magnificent male plumage and bewildering sexual display. Many species are named after the European royal members who once had exclusive access to the plumage.

For example, Paradisaea rudolphi (blue bird-of-paradise) is named after the Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, and has become a vulnerable species partially because of the plumage hunting. Now, an international collaborative work involving Dept. of Molecular Evolution and Development of University of Vienna, Zhejiang University of China, and Swedish Museum of Natural History analyzed all together 11 songbird species genomes, including those of five bird-of-paradise species, and reconstructed the evolutionary history of their sex chromosomes. [read more]

 

 

Dynamic evolutionary history and gene content of sex chromosomes across diverse songbirds, Luohao Xu et al., Nature Ecology & Evolution DOI: 10.1038 / s41559-019-0850-1

 Back

Many species are named after the European royal members who once had exclusive access to the plumage. For example, Paradisaea rudolphi (blue bird-of-paradise) is named after the Crown Prince Rudolf of Austria, and has become a vulnerable species partially because of the plumage hunting (Ellis Rowan (c1847-1922) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons).