Evolution Of Hummingbirds: A Narrative Analysis

Evolution causes many changes in a species. Some species of animals develop thicker fur others have stronger muscles. Hummingbirds have to consume massive amounts of foods everyday in order to survive. One of their evolutionary traits is a mutated T1R1-T1R3 taste receptor. An experiment was conducted to test how hummingbirds detect sugars in nectar. The article “Evolution of sweet taste perception in hummingbirds by transformation of the ancestral umami receptor” (Maude W. Baldwin et al. science 345, 929 (2014) describes the experiment. They stated that hummingbirds were able to evolve and change the T1R1-T1R3 receptor in order to detect nectar and allow the spread of the hummingbird.
The hummingbird has made many evolutionary and adaptive qualities since its ancestral split from swifts. The T1R1-T1R3 taste receptor is one of these evolutionary changes. In humans this receptor is used to detect an umami flavor, or a sweet and savory meat flavor. Hummingbirds use this receptor instead to taste sweet or sugar in their food. In most species the receptor T1R2-T1R3 is what is used to detect sweetness. Hummingbirds lost this receptor sometime during their species development. Which in turn is what …show more content…
They hypothesized that hummingbirds would be able to detect the lack of caloric value in what they were eating by using their mutated taste receptor. They exposed hummingbirds to two types of sugar and measured the rapid-choice decisions of a hummingbird. They noticed an increase in the time and how many licks a hummingbird took to consume certain substances and a few rejection responses from other solutions. The birds seemed to prefer the sucrose over the the water. They also seemed to like sucrose more than the artificial sweetener aspartame. The birds also rejected mixtures of the different solutions. This showed just how sensitive their receptor was and it was not just