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Jon Sullivan
Jon Sullivan
@joncounts@mastodon.nz  ·  activity timestamp 3 days ago

I caught up with this amazing science study published this month. When the UCLA campus in Southern California closed during the peak of the covid pandemic, the beaks of dark-eyed juncos (birds) on campus shifted to be more like the non-urban wild birds. Then, in the years afterwards, the birds shifted back to pre-covid urban beaks. It's microevolution caught in action.

Pam Yeh, the professor involved in the study, has been carefully studying junco evolution since grad school, and so was ideally placed to spot this subtle evolutionary shift.

https://newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/bird-beaks-changed-shape-during-pandemic-junco
https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2520996122

#birds #evolution #UrbanEcology #California

Rapid morphological change in an urban bird due to COVID-19 restrictions

UCLA

Without campus leftovers to pick through, the beaks of this bird changed shape during the pandemic

Urban junco bills at UCLA became more like mountain junco bills.
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