Following the example of Pia’s post about the gift of collaboration, I will introduce you to a side project I did with two colleagues from a different research group at today’s door.
It started with a strange sighting from a friend: a bird that looked like a species but sang like another one. This friend is a very knowledgeable ornithologist, so I had no doubt that he knew what he was talking about. He proceeded to capture the individual to have a closer look and take a feather sample, before releasing it back into the wild. He then contacted the Natural History Museum of Oslo to see if it was possible to find out whether this bird was a hybrid or just a very strange individual that had learned a song from a different species. Either way, it would be an interesting finding!
On this first attempt, one of the museum researchers performed a mtDNA analysis, which confirmed that the bird’s mother was from a different species than the song it was singing. Unfortunately, the paternity test was ruled out as being too demanding to do without a specific project dedicated to it.
This was when me and my colleagues got into action. The three of us were intrigued by this mystery bird and realized we could combine our skills to finish what had already been started. For the two of them, this was a project that was aligned with their Ph.D.’s goals, so they even got some funding for it. For me, it was simply an interesting side project. We got to work and two and a half years later (with a lot of breaks during the process), we are finally about to publish our results.
It was an integrative approach, using the bird’s photographs, sound recordings and molecular analysis. We found nuclear markers that separated the species and afterwards identified the bird’s father, confirming it was definitely a hybrid. We also determined the sex of the individual. Combining people from different museum groups, with different research interests and aims, our record represents the first genetically confirmed evidence of hybridization between these two species in the wild.
Since the paper is not publicly available yet, I chose not to mention all the details from our study, but stay tuned for the publication summary when it comes out!
