DNA reveals identity of Passenger Pigeon

Birdwatch ^ | 30 Oct 2010 | Birdwatch

[SunkenCiv]

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[stefanbatory]

you can also eat acorns...

[ApplegateRanch]

As it happens, there IS a useful purpose for acorns!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=we2iWTJqo98

[JEC]

Maybe you should get your head out of your a$$ and join those extinct animals.

[Pharmboy]

Absolutely correct! The most numerous bird species wiped out by hunters? Balderdash! It may very well have been the food shortage as you suggest, although I would vote for a parasite or virus. Just my opinion...

[gleeaikin]

I think the death of the chestnuts came some time after the death of the passenger pigeons. What finalized the demise of the PPs is that they needed a population of around 1,000 to generate enough excitement to trigger their sex hormones into functioning. With a very small population, no sex hormones, no next generation.

[gleeaikin]

While the last PP died in 1914, the population of PPs was decimated from 1870 to 1890. The first sign of the Chestnut blight was found in NY City in 1904, and spread at the rate of 50 miles a year, so Chestnut blight was NOT the cause or even an influence in PP extinction.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks gleeaikin, and ditto. A great number of Passenger Pigeons were shot right in their roosts here in Michigan, and shipped east for consumption as squab.

Cloning the PP?
http://tiger_spot.mapache.org/Biology/extinct2.html

[SunkenCiv]

[SunkenCiv]

Note: this topic is from 10/31/2010. Thanks again Palter.

Mitochondrial DNA... from Passenger Pigeon specimens at three North American museums... was compared to samples of the same gene segments from 79 other species of pigeon and dove. Not only did this reveal the relationships of the extinct bird, but it also showed that American columbids may have originated from a colonisation event from South-East Asia, probably arriving when sea levels were lower over the Bering Strait, prior to the Pleistocene.

Imagine, even birds are thought to have walked over Beringia, at least according to the landlubber Clovis-first-and-only drones.

The analysis also showed three clear Nearctic clades, probably indicating at least two separate colonisation events. However, the most basal clade in the Columbidae, the Columbina Ground Doves, is American, and it is therefore possible that pigeons and doves may have originated in the Americas, dispersed to Eurasia, and then dispersed back again...

Nearctic clades are pretty much my favorite clades. :^)

Band-tailed Pigeon also shares a louse species with its extinct relative, further supporting the relationship.

Patagioenas fasciata, of South America.