Thumbnail Image
Item

Tactile bill-tip organs in seabirds suggest conservation of a deep avian symplesiomorphy

du Toit, Carla J
; 
Bond, Alexander L
; 
Cunningham, Susan J
; 
Field, Daniel J
; 
Portugal, Steven J
Citations
Altmetric:
Advisors
Editors
Other Contributors
Affiliation
EPub Date
Issue Date
2024-09-18
Submitted Date
2024-05-09
Subject Terms
seabirds
sensory ecology
tactile
comparative morphology
foraging
Collections
Life sciences
Show all metadata
Files
Thumbnail Image
Published version
Adobe PDF, 1.98 MB
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Other Titles
Abstract
Birds’ bills are their main tactile interface with the outside world. Tactile bill-tip organs associated with specialized foraging techniques are present in several bird groups, yet remain understudied in most clades. One example is Austrodyptornithes, the major seabird clade uniting Procellariiformes (albatrosses and petrels) and Sphenisciformes (penguins). Here, we describe the mechanoreceptor arrangement and neurovascular anatomy in the premaxillae of Austrodyptornithes. Using a wide phylogenetic sample of extant birds (361 species), we show that albatrosses and penguins exhibit complex tactile bill-tip anatomies, comparable to birds with known bill-tip organs, despite not being known to use tactile foraging. Petrels (Procellariidae, Hydrobatidae and Oceanitidae) lack these morphologies, indicating an evolutionary transition in bill-tip mechanosensitivity within Procellariiformes. The bill-tip organ in Austrodyptornithes may be functionally related to nocturnal foraging and prey detection under water, or courtship displays involving tactile stimulation of the bill. Alternatively, these organs may be vestigial as is likely the case in most palaeognaths (e.g. ostriches and emu). Ancestral state reconstructions fail to reject the hypothesis that the last common ancestor of Austrodyptornithes had a bill-tip organ; thus, tactile foraging may be ancestral for this major extant clade, perhaps retained from a deeper point in crown bird evolutionary history.
Citation
du Toit Carla J., Bond Alexander L., Cunningham Susan J., Field Daniel J. and Portugal Steven J. 2024Tactile bill-tip organs in seabirds suggest conservation of a deep avian symplesiomorphyBiol. Lett.2020240259 http://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2024.0259
Publisher
The Royal Society
Journal
Biology Letters
Research Unit
URI
http://hdl.handle.net/10141/623200
DOI
10.1098/rsbl.2024.0259
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
Embedded videos
Type
Journal Article
Item Description
Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. The attached file is the published version of the article.
NHM Repository
Series/Report no.
ISSN
1744-9561
EISSN
1744-957X
ISBN
ISMN
GovDoc
Test Link
License
openAccess
cb
Sponsors