Meeting Abstract

 

33-4  Friday, Jan. 4 14:15 – 14:30  The bizarre occipital feathers of the King of Saxony Bird of Paradise (Pteridophora alberti) FEO, TJ*; SARANATHAN, V; PRUM, RO; Smithsonian; Yale-NUS College; Yale University feot@si.edu

In recent years, there has been considerable progress in our understanding of the evolution and development of feathers. A wealth of newly described feathered Mesozoic taxa has revealed a long evolutionary history of feather diversity that predates modern birds and research on feather development has begun to uncover the processes that control the shape and color of feathers. In order to draw the most robust interpretations, these productive lines of research rely on detailed descriptions of extant feather diversity. However, many of the most extreme examples of feathers remain poorly described in the literature. The King of Saxony Bird of Paradise (Paradiseaidae: Pteridophora alberti) sports the most bizarre feather known in nature. Adult males have two extremely elongated occipital plumes with a series of square, enamel-blue flags running along one side. Both the shape and color of these feathers is so unusual that the first specimens brought to England were confidently declared a fake by leading ornithologists. Here, we use a combination of TEM, SEM, SAXS, and high-resolution synchrotron CT to give the first detailed descriptions of the morphology, structure, and color of the bizarre Pteridophora occipital plumes.