ArticleScientific reports2017
Aerobic performance in tinamous is limited by their small heart. A novel hypothesis in the evolution of avian flight.
Article in Scientific reports, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 38 citations in OpenAlex.
- Flight style and metabolism shape the tempo of genome evolution in birds.PLoS biology · 2026Article
- Morphometrics of body and heart in a wild living bird, the black-headed gull Chroicocephalus ridibundus, in relation to age and sex.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- 3D atlas of tinamou (Neornithes: Tinamidae) pectoral morphology: Implications for reconstructing the ancestral neornithine flight apparatus.Journal of anatomy · 2023Article
- Article
- Avian cardiomyocyte architecture and what it reveals about the evolution of the vertebrate heart.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Review
- Arterial wall thickening normalizes arterial wall tension with growth in American alligators, Alligator mississippiensis.Journal of comparative physiology. B, Biochemical, systemic, and environmental physiology · 2021Article
- Dynamic evolution of transposable elements, demographic history, and gene content of paleognathous birds.Zoological research · 2021Article
- Article
- Evolution of Flight Muscle Contractility and Energetic Efficiency.Frontiers in physiology · 2020Review
- Article
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Authors and funding
5 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Some biomechanical studies from fossil specimens suggest that sustained flapping flight of birds could have appeared in their Mesozoic ancestors. We challenge this idea because a suitable musculoskeletal anatomy is not the only requirement for sustained flapping flight. We propose the "heart to fly" hypothesis that states that sustained flapping flight in modern birds required an enlargement of the heart for the aerobic performance of the flight muscles and test it experimentally by studying tinamous, the living birds with the smallest hearts. The small ventricular size of tinamous reduces cardiac output without limiting perfusion pressures, but when challenged to fly, the heart is unable to support aerobic metabolism (quick exhaustion, larger lactates and post-exercise oxygen consumption and compromised thermoregulation). At the same time, cardiac growth shows a crocodilian-like pattern and is correlated with differential gene expression in MAPK kinases. We integrate this physiological evidence in a new evolutionary scenario in which the ground-up, short and not sustained flapping flight displayed by tinamous represents an intermediate step in the evolution of the aerobic sustained flapping flight of modern birds.
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