National geographic tits

This made the scientists wonder if there are measurable differences between beak length in the two populations—and sure enough, there were. Environment Exploring an epic Colorado river during record-breaking drought.

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To investigate if longer beaks were giving the birds an advantage, the team looked at ongoing studies of great tit fledgling rates.

Subscriber Exclusive Content. In the U. Intriguingly, the opposite was true for the great tits in the Netherlands—likely because the British have a lot more bird feeders than the Dutch.

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This is what led he and his team to start looking at DNA from two distinct populations of great tits, a yellow-and-black songbird found in the U. After examining thousands of DNA sequences, the researchers found discrepancies in areas of the birds' genetic code typically associated with face shape in humans, as well as in areas associated with beak shape in Darwin finches, which have been the subject of these sorts of studies before.

For Spurgin, this is all part of the fun.

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Environment Planet Possible Bizarre mangrove forest offers clues to future sea level rise. But he and his colleagues have discovered some truly fascinating clues that a bird called the great tit may be evolving longer beaks to access bird feeders. Spurgin has always been interested in how birds have served as models to help us probe at big evolutionary questions.

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National geographic - what is it?

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