Donald R Powers

Donald R Powers

Mar 07, 2017

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Hummingbirds are AMAZING!!!

Before I get in to today's lab note, I wanted to emphasize that if you have ANY questions regarding this project, or hummingbirds in general please do not hesitate to ask!  A good place to ask would be on the discussion page for this project so others who are interested in the answers to your questions can benefit.

I often get asked how I got started studying hummingbirds.  It was totally by accident.  When I started my Master's degree at San Diego State and decided I wanted to study birds I stumbled on to a 1978 paper by Paul Ewald and Lynn Carpenter on Anna's hummingbird territoriality and was hooked.

Hummingbirds are incredible creatures.  Not only are they tiny (some as small as 2g!) and spend a huge amount of energy each day, but in the words of the late Bill Calder "they have a physiology that is more like fish and amphibians" because of their high water turnover rate.  Over the course of a day a hummingbird, because most of its energy comes from nectar, consumes anywhere from 2-5 times its body weight in water.  That would be the equivalent of a 200 lbs human drinking a ton (2000 lbs) of water every day!!

Three different hummingbird species feeding on a feeding at Santa Lucia in the Ecuadorian Andes Mountains.


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About This Project

When hummingbirds use more energy than they consume, they use deep hypothermia (torpor) at night to lower energy costs. Torpor is not restorative like sleep so extended use can have physiological consequences. Our field work suggests hummingbirds might be capable of controlled shallow hypothermia. This would be a novel tool for periods of low energy intake. We will use thermal imaging to track nighttime body temperature to see if hummingbirds use the more restorative shallow hypothermia.

Blast off!

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