Meeting Abstract
Differences in avian wingtip shape have well-characterized relationships to flight performance, migratory behavior, and feeding ecology. Kingfishers, woodpeckers, and their kin (Coraciimorphae) display a broad range of wingtip shapes, as well as a range of flight behaviors (including intermittent flight and flexed-wing upstroke) that cannot, as of yet, be clearly identified as adaptive responses to flight performance demands. These taxa also possess an unusual suite of morphologies in the forelimb skeleton at sites of flight feather attachment and articulation. This study examines the relationships between feeding and migration ecology, distal primary feather lengths, and forelimb musculoskeletal characters. Exploration of these relationships was conducted using phylogenetic co-inertia analysis on matrices of feeding and migratory behaviors (13 binary characters), lengths of primaries VI-X, and musculoskeletal morphology (79 categorical characters) for 65 Coraciimorph taxa. Coraciimorph birds maintain a relationship between pointed wingtip morphology and migratory behavior/aerial foraging that is consistent with other avian clades. The analysis of co-inertia between ecological characters and musculoskeletal characters points to several hot-spots of morphological variation, most notably the joint surfaces and muscle attachments of the carpometacarpus and digits II – III. A prominent and recurring pattern within piciform birds, with parallel occurrences in Bucerotiformes, involves a shift in joint surface conformation of the proximal phalanx of digit II, together with the formation of a deep sulcus in the joint surface for digit III and the elongation of the digit III phalanx. This morphology may be tied in to producing tip washout, a spanwise twist in the wing that may be advantageous for flight at low advance ratios
