DNA metabarcoding reveals broadly overlapping diets in three sympatric North American hummingbirds

Hummingbirds, a highly diverse avian family, are specialized vertebrate pollinators that feed upon carbohydrate-rich nectar to fuel their fast metabolism while consuming invertebrates to obtain protein. Previous work has found that morphologically diverse hummingbird communities exhibit higher diet specialization on floral resources than morphologically similar hummingbird communities. Due to the difficulties of studying avian diets, we have little understanding whether hummingbirds show similar patterns with their invertebrate prey. Here, we use DNA metabarcoding to complete an analysis of floral and invertebrate diets of three species of sympatric North American hummingbirds. We collected fecal samples from 89 Anna’s (Calypte anna), 39 Black-chinned (Archilochus alexandri), and 29 Calliope (Selasphorus calliope) hummingbirds in urban and rural localities as well as across an elevational gradient from sea level to 2500 meters above sea level in California, USA. We found hummingbirds sh...

蜂鸟作为多样性极高的鸟类家族，是一类特化的脊椎动物传粉者，它们依赖富含碳水化合物的花蜜为快速代谢供能，同时通过摄食无脊椎动物获取蛋白质。已有研究表明，形态多样性较高的蜂鸟群落对花资源的食性特化程度高于形态相似的蜂鸟群落。由于鸟类食性研究存在诸多困难，我们对蜂鸟在无脊椎动物猎物方面是否表现出相似模式知之甚少。在此，我们采用DNA宏条形码技术（DNA metabarcoding），对三种同域分布的北美蜂鸟的花类及无脊椎动物食性展开分析。我们在美国加利福尼亚州的城乡区域及从海平面至海拔2500米的海拔梯度范围内，采集了89只安娜蜂鸟（Calypte anna）、39只黑颏蜂鸟（Archilochus alexandri）和29只卡利奥佩蜂鸟（Selasphorus calliope）的粪便样本。我们发现蜂鸟的食性……