The
Club-winged Manakin (
Machaeropterus deliciosus) is a small
passerineA passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders:...
birdBirds are winged, bipedal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay eggs. There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Birds range in size from the Bee Hummingbird to the ...
which is a resident breeding species in the cloud forest on the western slopes of the Andes Mountains of
ColombiaColombia , officially the Republic of Colombia , is a constitutional republic in northwestern South America. Colombia is bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the northwest by Panama; and to the west by the Pacific Ocean...
and northwestern
EcuadorEcuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador , literally, "Republic of the equator") is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America that...
. The
manakinThe manakins are a family, Pipridae, of some sixty small passerine bird species of the American tropics.-Description:They range in size from 7 to 15 cm and in weight from 8 to 30 g. The genus Tyranneutes comprise the smallest manakins, the genus Antilophia are believed to be the largest...
s are a
familyFamily denotes a group of people or animals affiliated by a consanguinity, affinity or co-residence...
(Pipridae) of small bird
speciesIn biology, a species is:* a taxonomic rank or* a unit at that rank ....
of subtropical and tropical
CentralManagua
Guatemala City
San Salvador
San Pedro Sula
Panama City
San José, Costa Rica
Santa Ana, El Salvador
León
San Miguel|-|}...
and
South AmericaSouth America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere...
.
Like several other manakins, the Club-winged Manakin produces a mechanical sound with its extremely modified secondary remiges.
The
Club-winged Manakin (
Machaeropterus deliciosus) is a small
passerineA passerine is a bird of the order Passeriformes, which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds or, less accurately, as songbirds, the passerines form one of the most diverse terrestrial vertebrate orders:...
birdBirds are winged, bipedal, endothermic , vertebrate animals that lay eggs. There are around 10,000 living species, making them the most numerous tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Birds range in size from the Bee Hummingbird to the ...
which is a resident breeding species in the cloud forest on the western slopes of the Andes Mountains of
ColombiaColombia , officially the Republic of Colombia , is a constitutional republic in northwestern South America. Colombia is bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the northwest by Panama; and to the west by the Pacific Ocean...
and northwestern
EcuadorEcuador , officially the Republic of Ecuador , literally, "Republic of the equator") is a representative democratic republic in South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west. It is one of only two countries in South America that...
. The
manakinThe manakins are a family, Pipridae, of some sixty small passerine bird species of the American tropics.-Description:They range in size from 7 to 15 cm and in weight from 8 to 30 g. The genus Tyranneutes comprise the smallest manakins, the genus Antilophia are believed to be the largest...
s are a
familyFamily denotes a group of people or animals affiliated by a consanguinity, affinity or co-residence...
(Pipridae) of small bird
speciesIn biology, a species is:* a taxonomic rank or* a unit at that rank ....
of subtropical and tropical
CentralManagua
Guatemala City
San Salvador
San Pedro Sula
Panama City
San José, Costa Rica
Santa Ana, El Salvador
León
San Miguel|-|}...
and
South AmericaSouth America is the southern continent of the Americas, situated entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere...
.
Music-making mechanism
Like several other manakins, the Club-winged Manakin produces a mechanical sound with its extremely modified secondary remiges. The manakins have adapted their wings in this odd way as a result of
sexual selectionSexual selection is the theory proposed by Charles Darwin that states that certain evolutionary traits can be explained by intraspecific competition. Darwin defined sexual selection as the effects of the "struggle between the individuals of one sex, generally the males, for the possession of the...
.
Charles DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist who realised and presented compelling evidence that all species of life have evolved over time from common ancestors, through the process he called natural selection...
noted how females could cause
evolutionIn biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are normally small, differences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a...
ary change simply by the influence of their
matingIn biology, mating is the pairing of opposite-sex or hermaphroditic organisms for copulation and, in social animals, also to raise their offspring. For animals, mating methods include random mating, disassortative mating, assortative mating, or a mating pool....
preferences. Thus, in manakins, the males have evolved adaptations to suit the females' attraction towards sound. Wing sounds in many manakin
lineageAn evolutionary lineage is a sequence of species, that form a line of descent, each new species the direct result of speciation from an immediate ancestral species. Lineages are subsets of the evolutionary tree of life. Lineages are often determined by the techniques of molecular systematics.-...
s, however, have evolved independently. Some species pop like a
firecrackerA firecracker is a small explosive device primarily designed to produce a large amount of noise, especially in the form of a loud bang; any visual effect is incidental to this goal. They have fuses, and are wrapped in a heavy paper casing, to contain the explosive compound...
, and there are a couple that makes whooshing noises in flight. The Club-winged Manakin, with its unique ability to produce musical sounds, is indisputably the most extreme example of sexual selection in manakins.
Each wing of the Club-winged Manakin has one feather with a series of at least seven ridges along its central vane. Next to the strangely ridged feather is another feather with a stiff, curved tip. When the bird raises its wings over its back, it shakes them back and forth over 100 times a second (
hummingbirdHummingbirds are among the smallest of birds, and include the smallest extant bird species, the Bee Hummingbirds. They can hover in mid-air by rapidly flapping their wings 12-90 times per second . They can also fly backwards, and are the only group of birds able to do so. Their English name derives...
s typically flap their wings only 50 times a second). Each time it hits a ridge, the tip produced a sound. The tip strikes each ridge twice: once as the feathers collide, and once as they move apart again. This raking movement allows a wing to produce 14 sounds during each shake. By shaking its wings 100 times a second, the Club-winged Manakin can produce up to 1,400 single sounds during that time.
While this sort of spoon-and-
washboardA washboard is a tool designed for hand washing clothing. With mechanized cleaning of clothing becoming more common by the end of the 20th century, the washboard has become better known for its originally subsidiary use as a musical instrument....
anatomyAnatomy is a branch of biology and medicine that is the consideration of the structure of living things. It is a general term that includes human anatomy, animal anatomy and plant anatomy...
to produce sounds is well-known in
insectInsects are arthropods, having a hard exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae. They are the most diverse group of animals on the planet and include more than a million species that are already described. Insects represent more than half of all...
s - see
stridulationStridulation is the act of producing sound by rubbing together certain body parts. This behavior is mostly associated with insects, but other animals are known to do this as well, such as a number of species of snakes and spiders. A dedicated stridulation apparatus has also been discovered in males...
-, it has never been documented before in
vertebrateVertebrates are members of the subphylum Vertebrata, chordates with backbones or spinal columns. About 58,000 species of vertebrates have been described. Vertebrata is the largest subphylum of chordates, and contains many familiar groups of large land animals. Vertebrates comprise cyclostomes, bony...
s (some
snakeSnakes are elongate legless carnivorous reptiles of the suborder Serpentes that can be distinguished from legless lizards by their lack of eyelids and external ears. Like all squamates, snakes are ectothermic amniote vertebrates covered in overlapping scales...
s stridulate too, but they do not have dedicated anatomical features for it). The discovery, made by Kimberly Bostwick, a
Cornell UniversityCornell University is a private university located in Ithaca, New York, USA, that is a member of the Ivy League.Cornell counts more than 255,000 living alumni, 28 Rhodes Scholars and 41 Nobel laureates affiliated with the university as faculty or students...
ornithologistOrnithology is a branch of zoology that concerns the study of birds. Several aspects of ornithology differ from related disciplines, due partly to the high visibility and the aesthetic appeal of birds...
, was published in the 29 July, 2005 issue of
ScienceScience is the academic journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and is considered one of the world's most prestigious scientific journals. The peer-reviewed journal, first published in 1880 is circulated weekly and has a print subscriber base of around 130,000...
. Bostwick argues that the new findings underscore just how powerful sexual selection can be. The mating preferences of female birds can produce not only the
peacockThe term peafowl can refer to the two species of bird in the genus Pavo of the pheasant family, Phasianidae. The African Congo Peafowl is placed in its own genus Afropavo and is not dealt with here. Peafowl are best known for the male's extravagant tail, which it displays as part of courtship...
's tail or the rooster's crow, but also feathers with microscopic adaptations that let them sing like crickets.
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