BIO190: The Class: Birds: Lesson 30

The Birds

The birds are a lineage of endothermic, diapsid amniotes that evolved flight in the Jurassic period of the Mesozoic.
Open and study the links below to prepare for the lesson.

Kodak: Sample Digital Images-Birds of a Feather

Birding: Natural History and Information Links

The National Audobon Society

Ornithology - the study of birds.
NAU's Department of Biological Sciences offers a course in ornithology. Contact the Biology Department's Advisement Center for details.

Dr. Russ Balda, a Regent's Professor of Biology, studies memory of birds. If you have an interest in birds, contact him at 520-523-9304.

Class Aves (figs. 30-1--> 30-33)

Aves: Fossil Record

Archaeopteryx

• 2 pairs appendages 1 pair for flight: 1 pair walking, perching, swimming (fig.30-10)

• feathers
  1. quill, shaft, barbs, vane, barbules
  2. contour, down (pillows), flight
  3. molting

• legs with scales

• muscular system (pg. 577)

• bony skeleton with air cavities = pneumatized

• beak with no teeth

• endothermic

• 4 chambered heart
  1. 2 atria
  2. 2 ventricles
  3. nucleated RBCs

• sternum
  1. with keel = carinate (flying)
  2. without keel = ratite (flightless)
     The Penquin Page

• respiration
  1. lungs
  2. air sacs
     (thorax, abdomen, bones)

• excretory system
  1. kidneys
  2. cloaca
  3. salt glands

• reproductive system
  1. dioecious
  2. some well developed copulatory organs; some cloacal contact
  3. females heterogametic

• mating systems
  1. monogamy
  2. polygany

• fert. int.
  (calcareous shelled egg)

• development
  1. parent incubation
  2. atricial vs precocial

• digestion/nutrition/beaks (fig. 30 - 11)

  Hummingbirds

  1. euryphagous/stenophagous

  2. herbivores/carnivores
     Raptor Site
  3. "tool users"

  4. scavengers
  5. crop
  6. gizzard
  7. owl pellets

• sensory
  1. vision - keen (fig. 30-15)
     1. rods
        (nocturnal )
     2. cones

  2. smell developed well in some
  3. taste developed well in some

  4. hearing well developed

• nervous system (pg. 582)

• flight (pg.583-585)
  Vertebrate Flight: A case study on convergent evolution
  1. ground-up hypothesis
  2. tree-down hypothesis

• migration/navigation
  1. routes = flyways

  2. stimulus
  3. finding the way

• populations/distributions

• human caused extinctions

Once you have completed the lesson, you should go to Assignment 30-1.

E-mail Sylvester Allred at Syl.Allred@nau.edu

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