Evolution Help for fiction

[ttyo888]

Hi my name is ttyo888, I am rather new to this forum which I believe can give me answers for some info needed for a fiction which has a lot to deal with in island evolution.

 

I believe I can get my answers and constructive criticism here. The writing forums unfortunately do not have much realistic answers.

 

 

Info I have currently

 

The only problem is how or why the birds evolved into what I dream of

Here's one

 

I managed to identify the key species that will evolve to populate my island.

 

Basically, the area I posted in the Google Earth pic earlier. Has the following

 

Tubenoses, a lot of them

Frigates

Skuas from Antarctica

Gulls

Terns

Lorikeets

Pacific Black Duck= in the past they had giant tree-browsing cousins in Hawaii.

 

Swallows

Old World warblers

Monarch flycatchers

 

This is based on the avifauna of the French Polynesia but excluding the ones that are introduced by humans.

 

I can say that it's a case of well convergent evolution and adaptative radiation.

 

But what kind of conditions will tempt a bird to give up flying and start moving on fours? And also will they have island tameness which will be detrimental?

[ecoli]

think about how evolution works by natural selection.

Nature puts pressure on animals, which selects for certain traits.

 

If you want your bird things to move onto land, maybe conditions on the island where no longer goo for flying... wind speeds became too high, maybe, or a toxin poisons birds that fly at high altitudes.

Perhaps there was some niche on the ground that a 'ground bird' was able to fill. A rodent eater with camoflauge feathers...

some ideas for you to think about.

[foodchain]

Hi my name is ttyo888, I am rather new to this forum which I believe can give me answers for some info needed for a fiction which has a lot to deal with in island evolution.

 

I believe I can get my answers and constructive criticism here. The writing forums unfortunately do not have much realistic answers.

 

 

Info I have currently

 

The only problem is how or why the birds evolved into what I dream of

Here's one

 

I managed to identify the key species that will evolve to populate my island.

 

Basically, the area I posted in the Google Earth pic earlier. Has the following

 

Tubenoses, a lot of them

Frigates

Skuas from Antarctica

Gulls

Terns

Lorikeets

Pacific Black Duck= in the past they had giant tree-browsing cousins in Hawaii.

 

Swallows

Old World warblers

Monarch flycatchers

 

This is based on the avifauna of the French Polynesia but excluding the ones that are introduced by humans.

 

I can say that it's a case of well convergent evolution and adaptative radiation.

 

But what kind of conditions will tempt a bird to give up flying and start moving on fours? And also will they have island tameness which will be detrimental?

 

Well birds never lost being bipedal. I would think they would retain this feature much like penguins. If by chance you want all four locomotion as familiar to say a lion or a tiger or reptile, well I don’t know what to think.

 

I mean in do you ask for a concrete example, like birds having to becoming better diggers over time by using the wing in such? I would think some sort of direct physical contact would be required in the process at least somewhere, much like flight and the wing in the first place.

[zule]

I think that the faster way of prompting this evolution would be the human hand:

Humans would cut most of the trees down, so the birds couldn’t stop there to rest when flying. On the other hand, men also would have finished with all the bird land predators, so the birds could stay on land easily.

[ttyo888]

Hey how about this theory about why some of my birds are walking on fours...

 

The island was once covered in rainforest like hawaii so it was difficult for mammals to reach and birds of prey to spot anything edible except bugs.

 

IN fact for a long time, bugs dominated this islands. Something like the Weta-sized bugs being the dominant predators of the island until seabirds evolved.

 

Then they find this lush rainforests full of unexploited opportunity. Did I mentioned that seabirds are opportunists? Enough bugs to keep the chicks well fed, the climate was pretty stable, well some decided to stay.

 

But being a thick forest, it's pretty crowded and food alway hiding in holes. And seabirds lack the perching toe of passerines so they can't perch. So they needed to climb trees though to get a sudden glut of food mostly bugs.

 

Then a mutation came into being, the birds developed claws to climb trees and shrank to fit their new homes and also it helped lot in evading Skuas.

 

Skuas and other predators moved into but the thick forest and fast-responsive prey caused them to have a lot of trouble in catching them as a result they evolved the same way to catch them rather like pine martens catching squirrels.

 

Then of course food in the ground is plentiful too. and birds have to manuveur in the ground to burrow to seek that grub.

 

But then when the rainforest retreated on the island due climate change in the last ice age. And also a mountain creates a rainshadow causing grass plains to appear.

 

Pacific Black Ducks the ancestors of some of the herbivores on the islands reached the islands and grazed on the grass and then the vegatation and of course growing large is a needed factor to digest the vegetation.

 

And another thing important is that their backbones will become unfused as they become more adaptated to foraging in the ground and the trees. But unfusing the backbone is still plausible right?

[ttyo888]

 

Hey here's some of the beak shapes I can conjure up but is it possible to have such weird beak?

[HappyCoder]

Well the eyes look kinda large. Maybe they live in dark places or at night. Also, having to walk on fours, maybe the bird needs to walk through small passages that it cannot do easily standing upright. So it evolved to accommodate that.