ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2009
The smallest avian genomes are found in hummingbirds.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2009. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Flight style and metabolism shape the tempo of genome evolution in birds.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Genomes from 117 vertebrate species reveal rapidly evolving segmental duplication landscapes.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Article
- The Bioinformatic Applications of Hi-C and Linked Reads.Genomics, proteomics & bioinformatics · 2024Review
- A nuclear genome assembly of an extinct flightless bird, the little bush moa.Science advances · 2024Article
- The origin of RNA interference: Adaptive or neutral evolution?PLoS biology · 2022Article
- Comparative Genomics and Evolution of Avian Specialized Traits.Current genomics · 2021Review
- Bats and birds as viral reservoirs: A physiological and ecological perspective.The Science of the total environment · 2021Review
- The Evolutionary Patterns of Genome Size in Ensifera (Insecta: Orthoptera).Frontiers in genetics · 2021Article
- The relationship between genome size and metabolic rate in extant vertebrates.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Genome size and lifestyle in gnesiotrochan rotifers.Hydrobiologia · 2019Article
- Sequence properties of certain GC rich avian genes, their origins and absence from genome assemblies: case studies.BMC genomics · 2019Article
- Shifting Paradigms in the Mechanics of Nectar Extraction and Hummingbird Bill Morphology.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2019Article
- Single-molecule, full-length transcript sequencing provides insight into the extreme metabolism of the ruby-throated hummingbird Archilochus colubris.GigaScience · 2018Article
- Similar Ratios of Introns to Intergenic Sequence across Animal Genomes.Genome biology and evolution · 2017Article
- Dynamics of genome size evolution in birds and mammals.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2017Article
- Genomic Landscape of Long Terminal Repeat Retrotransposons (LTR-RTs) and Solo LTRs as Shaped by Ectopic Recombination in Chicken and Zebra Finch.Journal of molecular evolution · 2016Article
- Article
- Metabolic 'engines' of flight drive genome size reduction in birds.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2014Article
- The evolution of intron size in amniotes: a role for powered flight?Genome biology and evolution · 2012Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It has often been suggested that the genome sizes of birds are constrained relative to other tetrapods owing to the high metabolic demands of powered flight and the link between nuclear DNA content and red blood cell size. This hypothesis predicts that hummingbirds, which engage in energy-intensive hovering flight, will display especially constrained genomes even relative to other birds. We report genome size measurements for 37 species of hummingbirds that confirm this prediction. Our results suggest that genome size was reduced before the divergence of extant hummingbird lineages, and that only minimal additional reduction occurred during hummingbird diversification. Unlike in some other avian taxa, the small amount of variation observed within hummingbirds is not explained by variation in respiratory and flight-related parameters. Unexpectedly, genome size appears to have increased in four unrelated hummingbird species whose distributions are centred on humid forests of the upper-tropical elevational zone on the eastern slope of the Andes. This suggests that the secondary expansion of the genome may have been mediated by biogeographical and demographic effects.
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