The Rico-Guevara lab was recently featured in UW News on research about how hummingbirds drink.

In a paper published online Nov. 27 by the Proceedings of the Royal Society Interface, an international team led by Dr. Alejandro Rico-Guevara, a UW assistant professor of biology and curator of ornithology at the Burke Museum, reveals the surprising flexibility of the hummingbird bill. Co-author on the paper is Dr. Kristiina Hurme, a UW assistant teaching professor of biology. The team discovered that a drinking hummingbird rapidly opens and shuts different parts of its bill simultaneously, engaging in an intricate and highly coordinated dance with its tongue to draw up nectar at lightning speeds.

To human eyes, these movements are barely perceptible. But for hummingbirds, they’re a lifeline.

“Most hummingbirds drink while they’re hovering mid-flight,” said Rico-Guevara, who is also curator of ornithology at the UW’s Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture. “Energetically, that is very expensive. Flying straight at commuting speeds uses up less energy than hovering to drink. So, hummingbirds are trying to minimize energy and drink as fast as they can — all from these hard-to-reach spaces — which requires special adaptations for speed and efficiency.”

Previous research showed that hummingbirds extend their tongues in rapid-fire movements when drinking nectar. But scientists did not know what role the bill itself played in feeding. The team collected high-speed video footage of individual hummingbirds from six different species drinking at transparent feeders at field sites in Colombia, Ecuador and the U.S. By analyzing the footage and combining it with data from micro-CT scans of hummingbird specimens at the Yale Peabody Museum, researchers discovered the intricate bill movements that underlie drinking:

• To extend its tongue, the hummingbird opens just the tip of its bill
• After the tongue brings in nectar, the bill tip closes
• To draw nectar up the bill, the hummingbird keeps the bill’s midsection shut tightly, while opening the base slightly
• Then, it opens its tip again to extend the tongue for a new cycle, a process many hummingbird species can do 10-15 times a second

Read the full article in UW News.