Meeting Abstract
Silent flight is important to the hunting strategy of owls (Strigiformes). There are two hypotheses for why they evolved silent flight: stealth and masking. Under the stealth hypothesis, silent flight evolved as a means of ambushing unsuspecting prey, a strategy that is crucial to owls hunting prey that hear well, such as small mammals. Under the masking hypothesis, silent flight evolved to aid in prey detection, a strategy that is important to owls hunting by ear, e.g. at night or when prey has tunneled underneath snow. Specialized wing and feather features are hypothesized to be associated with silent flight. These features include the leading edge comb—modified barbs on the leading edge that give the wing a serrated appearance—and the trailing edge fringe—unconnected hook radiates at the trailing edge that create a frayed edge. We measured comb and fringe morphology on museum specimens of over 170 species of owl. We plotted wing and feather features on the owl phylogeny and examined the evolution of the leading edge comb and trailing edge fringe against ecological traits such as diet, foraging ecology, and body size. These wing features are highly variable and vary with prey type and active hours.
