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  • RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Why some female hummingbirds mimic males: it’s all about nectar

Some female white-necked jacobins nab good feeding spots by adopting the flashy plumage of their bigger, brasher male counterparts.
Male white-necked Jacobin hummingbird in flight

The dazzling colours of the male white-necked jacobin (pictured) are found on roughly 20% of females. Credit: Ingo Arndt/Nature Picture Library

In some hummingbird species, the males are bright and aggressive, and females are drab and calm. However, about 20% of female white-necked jacobins (Florisuga mellivora) share the bold, iridescent blue-and-white colouration of the males. Jay Falk at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and his colleagues wanted to know why this trait persists among females and why in only one-fifth of them.

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Nature 609, 444 (2022)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-022-02789-3

References

  1. Falk, J. J., Rubenstein, D., R., Rico-Guevara, A., & Webster, M. S. Proc. R. Soc. B Biol. Sci. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.0332 (2022).

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