Stellers Georg was some kinda colonial naturalist who mushroom-stamped his name on tons of beautiful and rare creatures, some of which were famously driven to extinction by colonizers. The push to rename birds like the “steller’s jay” … I really hope it works out. Fairly certain some needledick mosquitofucker from le Fed will firebomb any university that endorses it tho. One thought on these guys was just to call them the stellar jay, which seems appropriate enough. They are exemplary creatures, with a head black like the cosmos and white streaks for eyebrows like shooting stars.
These jays are the only ones I’ve ever seen in Federal Way. No scrub jays up there, no blue jays in this part of the state. No big deal! Stellar jays are enough. They are very deft and sprightly, bounding and elegantly flapping up and down the canopy, jacking your peanuts, screeching whenever it’s screeching time. Jays are corvids, but next to crows, they are supermodels and olympic gymnasts. And yet, who is dominating in the colonized landscape? I favor this analogy – jay is to crow as gibbon is to human. A gibbon is brightly colored and very talented, cute and cool and amazing. But humans win. Brute force and pointed sticks.
I’ve wondered before in the comment section of a much smarter person than myself, could stellar jays be the result of a hybridization event between crows and blue jays? They look like a blue jay that slipped and fell in a puddle of crow black, immersing their upper body in it. Hence another suggested name, the black-crested jay. I know some very distantly related bird species can hybridize. This happens more commonly with waterfowl than with perching birds. Still, I’m less inclined to believe it now. Blacker color schemes can easily arise by convergence, and there’s no reason to doubt that happened. But if genetics prove that crank theory right someday, I will be crowing about it. haha. crow.
Can I get through even one of these posts without mentioning american crows?
Anyway, I’m now in a two-jay neighborhood, with both stellar jays and california scrub jays. It’s very cool. At least, it will be until the icecaps melt and my condo is below sea level. Until that day, let the jays screech for me as often as they please.
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Birds are unusual in that a lot of intergeneric hybrids are known. This is particularly noticeable with waterfowl, where just about all groups of Anatidae are linked by hybridisation, but gamefowl also have extensive wide hybridisation, including interfamilial hybrids.
Maybe there is something different about birds, but there are a couple other hypotheses to be considered.
Firstly, that it is an artefact of observation intensity. Waterfowl and gamefowl are groups that are widely kept in captivity, so are well observed, and are kept in small mixed species populations, both of which would contribute to a greater degree of observation of hybrids. The same applies to finches and parrots, which also have noticeable amounts of intergeneric hybridisation. In plants intergeneric hybrids are known from orchids, cacti, and whitebeams and allies in particular, and from the clusters of genera around wheat and cabbage; in the case of wheat and cabbage I don’t think it’s a coincidence that these are groups where a lot of effort has been put into hybridisation. Among mammals we have cames and wolphins.
Secondly, that it is an artefact of taxonomic inflation. Taxonomic ranks are not comparable between groups, and perhaps bird genera are particularly narrowly drawn. (The same may apply to Triticeae (wheat and allies) and Brassiceae (cabbage and allies.)
http://bird-hybrids.com/ has a database of record bird hybrids.
Turning to corvids there are known intergeneric hybrids within the subfamily Cyanocoracinae (New World jays), but no hybrids between them and genera in other subfamilies. Hybrids of Steller’s jay with blue jay and with California scrub jay are in the database, as well as several intrasubspecific hybrids within Steller’s jay. Wikipedia says that Steller’s and blue jays hybridise sufficiently often that “their status as distinct species has been contested”, and “at least some of the variation in (Steller’s jay) is due to different degrees of hybridization (with blue jays)”. On the other hand Google Scholar found me a paper that claims that its data “provides compelling evidence for recognizing at least two species of Steller’s Jay”. (They mostly sampled US populations, and found a distinction between subsp. stelleri drawn large – corresponding to frontalis and carbonacea in the Wikipedia article, and presumably also including stelleri, carlottae and annectens) and subsp. macrolopha.)
I wouldn’t hold out much hope of hybridisation or even introgression from Corvus accounting for characters in Cyanocitta stelleri. There are published genomes for corvines and cyanocoracines, including Cyanocitta stelleri; one would expect that if there was any substantial evidence of hybridisation someone would have noticed. (The paper on the Cyanocitta stelleri genome didn’t provide a cladogram, rather to my surprise.) Hybridisation between a stem-corvine and a stem-cyanocoracine would be more plausible, but couldn’t account for traits in individual cyanocoracine species.
that’s the type of stuff i love to find out about. thanks!