This project will explore how body shape and behavior co-evolve in animals, by examining how birds produce special communicative wing- sounds, or sonations. One group of birds from the tropics, the Pipridae, produces particularly extreme and diverse sonations. Nearly a dozen species of piprids will be examined to better understand how their wings produce sound. High-speed video will be used to determine the limb motions used during sound production. Experimental manipulation of specialized feathers will be used to determine how the feather "instruments" are employed to produce a unique sustained, harmonically-toned sound. Digitally-aided dissections and CT scans of museum specimens will be used to model how changes in the shapes and sizes of wing bones and muscles have influenced how the wing functions. Because the relationships among the examined species are known, and because appropriate variation exists among these species, this information will be useful in determining the sequence of events that lead to the evolution of this specialized system of communication.
The intellectual merits of this research come from generating new data on a poorly studied phenomenon, generating state-of-the-art kinematic data from field subjects, lending insight to avian wing function, generating functional hypotheses testable by macroevolutionary tests, and addressing Tinbergen's "origin and transformation" question by examining the interplay between the evolution of behavior and morphology.
The impacts of this research will be made through training students, introducing Latin American communities to the principles behind this research, and the production of a high-quality video documentary for distribution to museums nationwide.
