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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Found: hideout of some of the last primordial pigeons

Rock doves on some Scottish islands show almost no sign of having interbred with domestic pigeons.
A rock dove standing in an abandoned house on South Uist, Outer Hebrides, Scotland.

The relatively long, slender bill of this rock dove from the Outer Hebridean islands of Scotland are characteristic of feral pigeons’ ancestors. Credit: W. J. Smith et al./iScience

Charles Darwin developed his theory of natural selection in part by studying a form of artificial selection: the nineteenth-century rage for pigeon breeding, which created a wealth of fantastical varieties of pigeon (Columba livia). So widespread was pigeon fancying that it seeded the world with escaped domestic birds and their feral descendants, which then hybridized with their wild ancestors, the rock doves.

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Nature 607, 214 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-01780-2

References

  1. Smith, W. J. et al. iScience https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2022.104620 (2022).

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