Hummingbirds are well known for their hovering flight, one of the most energetically expensive modes of locomotion among animals. Molt is a costly event in the annual cycle, in which birds replace their feathers, including all their primary feathers, which, in hummingbirds, comprise most of the area of the wing. Despite this, the effects of molt on hovering flight are not well known. Here, we examined high-speed videos (14 individuals of three species from the Colombian Andes recorded at 1200 FPS) comparing molting and non-molting hummingbirds’ wing kinematics and wingtip trajectories. We found that molting hummingbirds rotated their wings in more acute angles during both downstroke and upstroke compared to non-molting individuals (10° vs 20°, and 15° vs 29°, respectively), while other flight parameters remained unchanged. Our findings show that hummingbirds are capable of sustaining hovering flight and thereby maintaining their weight support even under impressive wing area reductions by adjusting their stroke amplitudes.
Winging it: Hummingbirds alter flying kinematics during molt
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We are excited to invite you to a unique scientific conference, celebrating the 100-year anniversary of The Company of Biologists, and bringing together our different communities. The conference will incorporate the Spring Meetings of the BSCB and the BSDB, the JEB Symposium Sensory Perception in a Changing World and a DMM programme on antimicrobial resistance. Find out more and register your interest to join us in March 2025 in Liverpool, UK.
The power of planaria
In their Research Article, Orel Benita and colleagues obtain the first recording of well-defined extracellular multiunit activity from the freshwater planarian brain by a straight-forward technique. These traits combined with their exceptional regeneration capabilities, allow for neurobiological experiments not possible in any other model organism such as an electrophysiological recording from planaria with two heads that control a shared body.
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