This may be the first hybrid bird that exists due to climate change
Experts became aware of the hybrid bird through social media photos.
Biologists at The University of Texas at Austin (UT) have found a rare hybrid jaybird, and say it may be one of the first examples of an animal that exists because of climate change.
The bird is the natural offspring of green and blue jay parents, two species separated by 7 million years of evolution. Green jays are usually found in Central America, ranging from Mexico into southern Texas.
Blue jays are seen across the eastern U.S., rarely west of Houston, Texas. In the past, they seldom met. Climate change has pushed green jays north and blue jays west; both now live around San Antonio, Texas.
A photo of the rare hybrid jay. (Brian Stokes)
"We think it's the first observed vertebrate that's hybridized as a result of two species both expanding their ranges due, at least in part, to climate change," Brian Stokes, a graduate student in ecology, evolution, and behavior at UT, and first author of the study, says in a statement.
Hybrid species already exist in the wild, but they’re more often the result of human activity, like the introduction of an invasive species, Stokes notes, but this jay hybrid appears to be a direct result of changing weather patterns that altered the range of the green and blue jays.
A rare hybrid bird identified in a suburb of San Antonio, Texas (centre panel, credit: Brian Stokes) is the result of mating between a male blue jay (left, credit: Travis Maher/Cornell Lab of Ornithology/Macaulay Library) and a female green jay (right, credit: Dan O’Brien/Cornell Lab of Ornithology/Macaulay Library).
Stokes first became aware of the hybrid bird through social media photos posted by a San Antonio birder, who invited Stokes to her backyard to see it up close.
He was able to catch the bird, tag it, and take a quick blood sample.
"I don't know what it was, but it was kind of like random happenstance," he said in the statement.
"If it had gone two houses down, probably it would have never been reported anywhere."
Lab tests revealed the bird is a male hybrid of a green jay mother and a blue jay father. It resembles a blue and green hybrid that was bred in captivity in the 1970s.
Stokes says hybridization is “probably way more common” in the wild than we realize, and that many hybrids go unreported.
They opted not to officially name the bird, but in their statement, they nicknamed it a “brue jay.”
A study detailing the discovery has been published in the journal Environment and Ecology.