Evolution may be happening in UK backyards, and fast. A longterm study of UK great tits documented that their bills are longer now than they were in 1970. The 70 years of data also included information from electronic tags on birds that tracks how much time individual birds spend at backyard feeders so beak length can be correlated with bird feeder use.
"Between the 1970s and the present day, beak length has got longer among the British birds. That's a really short time period in which to see this sort of difference emerging," says Professor Jon Slate, of the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University of Sheffield.
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The findings are part of a long term study being carried out on populations of great tits in Wytham Woods, and in Oosterhout and Veluwe, in the Netherlands. The team screened DNA from more than 3000 birds to search for genetic differences between the British and the Dutch populations. These differences indicate where natural selection might be at work. [...]
"In the UK we spend around twice as much on birdseed and birdfeeders than mainland Europe -- and, we've been doing this for some time. In fact, at the start of the 20th century, Punch magazine described bird feeding as a British national pastime," says Dr Lewis Spurgin, of the School of Biological Sciences at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
"Although we can't say definitively that bird feeders are responsible, it seems reasonable to suggest that the longer beaks amongst British great tits may have evolved as a response to this supplementary feeding."
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I’ve one main concern — what happens if the backyard feeders go empty?