The first documented offspring of a long-term independent evolved species in the wild

This healthy, one-year-old male offspring is the first recorded hybrid between
the rose-breasted toucan and the bright red donner finch.
The two species have such different nesting preferences that they have been on independent evolutionary trajectories for at least 10 million years — until now
.

Stephen Gosser, a self-described "diehard birdwatcher," was in the forests of western Pennsylvania in June 2020 when he believed he heard the elusive, stunningly beautiful song of a red finch
.
This blood-red bird, with black wings and tail, is loved by birdwatchers for its beauty and rarity, as it likes to hide high in
the forest canopy.

When Gosser finally found the songbird, he spotted a species that looked like a rose-breasted toucan but sounded like a bright red donner finch
.
He took a few photos and asked for support; Soon after, a team from the Pittsburgh National Aviary arrived to capture the bird and collect blood samples
.

To follow up on Gosser's recommendations, a team of scientists led by Penn State was able to determine that the specimen was a unique hybrid bird whose relatives had not clustered in the same breeding site or bloodline
for 10 million years.
Their findings were recently published in
the journal Ecology and Evolution.

"I love this story because it starts with a little mystery and ends with a surprising discovery," said
David Toews, lead author of the study and an assistant professor of biology at Penn State.

The story begins with an impossible encounter
between a female rose-breasted toucan and a male bright red donner finch.
Since the two species prefer different habitats, experts are still unsure how and where they met
.
Donner finches generally prefer canopy cover from mature forests, while rose-breasted eagles prefer open spaces
at the edge of woodlands.
According to Toews, the two species have been on different evolutionary trajectories for at least 10 million years — until now — because of their very different
nesting preferences.

The bird's DNA confirmed that its mother was a toucan and its father was a Donner finch
.

The researchers determined that the bird Gosser found was a healthy, one-year-old male offspring, descended from a rose-breasted toucan and a bright red finch, the first such hybrid bird
to be recorded.
However, its origin story is largely a mystery
.

Luckily, Toews has plenty of techniques to use to solve these kinds of puzzles
.
From a blood sample, they can get a small sample of DNA
.
The combination of audio and genetic material will bring them as close as possible to solving the mystery of the bird's origin
.

Their approach relies on analyzing innate and acquired
.
Most often, songbirds learn to sing from their
fathers.
Their vocalizations can reveal how they were raised by
whom.

"We knew Mom was there, she laid the eggs, sitting on the nest," Toews said
.
"We don't know exactly where this is because the two species prefer different habitats
.
" Wherever it was, its pair either stayed long enough for the younger offspring to learn the song of their father or the song
of the neighbor's Donner Sparrow.
”

The researchers used a method called bioacoustic analysis to confirm that the sound they captured did indeed match the song of the red donner finch — revealing that the hybrid finch most likely learned to
sing from its father.

"What people may not understand is that when we analyze bird calls, we're not actually listening to them
.
We are watching them
.
"We're looking at the wavelength of the sound — or more accurately at 'spectrograms' — and we're actually measuring the visual composition of the sound waves to analyze the song
.
"

After the sound was confirmed, the team turned to genome sequencing to trace the hybrid's genetic ancestor
.
Nature confirmed the results of acquired cultivation, the mother of a toucan and the father of
a donner finch.

"We used the same tools we used to identify other mixed-race children, but we usually got vague, more esoteric answers
," Toews said.
In this case, we identified the species
.
We knew who their parents were, and in the end we came to a satisfactory conclusion
.
I found that this story didn't just resonate
with bird nerds like me.
”

Reference: Genetic confirmation of a hybrid between two highly divergent cardinalid species: A rose-breasted grosbeak (Pheucticus ludovicianus) and a scarlet tanager (Piranga olivacea)