A DNA test reveals that hybrid birds have been sighted in the backyard of Pennsylvania: three species in one

A yellow, black and white bird seen in a Pennsylvania backyard earlier this year turned out to be a hybrid of three different species.

When the bird watcher, Lowell Burket, saw the male bird in the Roaring Spring Borough in May, he noticed that this one had the physical attributes of the Blue-winged Warbler and the Golden-winged Warbler, the Huffington Post reported. The bird, however, sang as a third species, the Brown-sided Warbler.

After taking pictures and videos of the bird, Burket contacted the Fuller Evolutionary Biology Lab in Cornell. The lab happily took note of his email and researcher David Toews contacted him.

Both took blood samples and measurements of the bird when they found it. The DNA analysis now reveals that Burket's suspicions about the bird were right.

It's three species in one. The bird's mother was a hybrid between the blue-winged warbler and the gold-winged warbler, while the father was a brown-walled warbler.

In a press release published by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Toews explained that they had examined the genes coding for different warbler colors in order to recreate what the bird's mother would have looked like. He explained that it was the avian equivalent of a detective facial composite generated using genes.

Hybridization occurs commonly in the Blue-winged Warbler and Golden-winged Warbler, but prior to the Burket discovery, no hybridization was recorded between these species and the Brown-sided Warblers.

"It's extremely rare," said Toews. "The female is a hybrid of Golden-winged / Blue-winged Warbler – also known as Brewster's Warbler. She then mated with a Brown-sided Warbler and successfully bred it. "

This type of hybridization is a rare event, but it can happen more often in declining warbler populations because of the choice of a smaller pool of partners.

Toews explained that hybridization in the declining population of the Golden-winged Warbler suggests that females of the species could get the best of a bad situation.

Toews also stated that this would suggest that warblers in general are reproductively compatible long after independently developing significant differences in appearance.

"He tells us that warblers in general appear to be reproductively compatible after millions of years of independent evolution," said Toews. Gizmodo.

"The elements that really define them, their distinct colors and their songs, are probably complementary obstacles, and they do not intersect because they can not, but because they chose not to do it."

The results were published in the journal Letters of biology November 7th.