An article by Kenneth P. Dial and two co-authors in the May 2006 issue of BioScience summarizes experimental evidence indicating that ancestral protobirds incapable of flight could have used their protowings to improve hindlimb traction and thus better navigate steep slopes and obstructions. By using their protowings in this way, they would presumably have had an advantage when pursuing prey and escaping from predators.
Dial and colleagues performed experiments on several species of juvenile galliform (chicken-like) birds, concentrating on chukar partridges. Chukars can run 12 hours after hatching, but they cannot fly until they are about a week old. Even before they are able to fly, however, the birds flap their developing wings in a characteristic way while running, which improves their ability to climb steep slopes and even vertical surfaces. Dial and colleagues have named this form of locomotion "wing-assisted incline running" (WAIR). After they are able to fly, chukars often use WAIR in preference to flying to gain elevated terrain, and exhausted birds always resort to WAIR.
Dial and colleagues describe experiments showing that if the surface area of chukar wings is reduced by plucking or trimming the feathers, WAIR becomes less effective for climbing slopes. Dial and colleagues propose that incipiently feathered forelimbs of bipedal protobirds may have provided the same advantages for incline running as have now been demonstrated in living juvenile birds. Their work thus supports a new theory about the evolution of flight in birds. WAIR, which the authors believe to be widespread in birds, appears to offer an answer to the question first posed by St. George Jackson Mivart in 1871: "What use is half a wing?"
BioScience publishes commentary and peer-reviewed articles covering a wide range of biological fields, with a focus on "Organisms from Molecules to the Environment." The journal has been published since 1964. AIBS is an umbrella organization for professional scientific societies and organizations that are involved with biology. It represents some 200 member societies and organizations with a combined membership of about 250,000.
The complete list of research articles in the May 2006 issue of BioScience is as follows:
Controlling Ticks and Tick-borne Zoonoses with Biological and Chemical Agents. Richard S. Ostfeld and colleagues
Forest Ecosystem Responses to Exotic Pests and Pathogens in Eastern North America. Gary M. Lovett and colleagues
Biophysical and Biogeochemical Responses to Climate Change Depend on Dispersal and Migration. Paul A. T. Higgins and John Harte
River and Wetland Restoration: Lessons from Japan. Keigo Nakamura and colleagues
Hiring Criteria in Biology Departments of Academic Institutions. Christine M. Fleet and colleagues
What Use is Half a Wing in the Ecology and Evolution of Birds? Kenneth P. Dial and colleagues
Journal
BioScience