“To Feed or To Fight: Energetics and Weapons” Energetically constrained animals have evolved adaptations to enhance caloric intake. On the other hand, animal competition sometimes turns into physical combat, and particular weaponry evolves. In this talk, Kristiina and Alejandro will present theoretical and empirical findings on each of these fronts, along with a case study of their intersection, namely, hummingbird bill weapons. These discoveries revive questions dating back to Darwin and Wallace about how these birds budget energy gain and expenditure to enable hovering, the most expensive form of locomotion, establishing coevolutionary relationships with flowers. These novel perspectives of a data-rich mutualistic system, open the door to quantitative and comparative assessments of trade-offs between energy optimality and fighting proficiency.

Kristiina Hurme and Alejandro Rico-Guevara are two bird lovers and biologists, from Princeton and Universidad Nacional de Colombia, respectively. They earned their doctoral degrees at the University of Connecticut, are affiliated with the Flight Lab at the Biology Department, UC Berkeley, and will start as faculty at the University of Washington, Seattle, next year. They study hummingbird feeding, fighting, communication, learning, vision and other behaviors by slowly habituating them to new feeders, cameras, etc. Their research was recently featured in the NY Times. Our subjects participate voluntarily, they are not camera shy!