“We were very surprised because this is a long living bird and there’s lots of reasons to expect that we wouldn’t see any morphological changes this quickly given their longevity,” he said. Robert Fletcher Jr., University of Florida biologist Their success was attributed to other hypotheses, such as the birds learning to pick on baby snails that were still small. Fletcher said many people assumed the birds wouldn’t show signs of any physical changes. This prompted Fletcher and his team to try and figure out why. “In the 1980’s the dusky seaside sparrow went extinct in Florida under the watch of conservation agencies very rapidly, so when people saw the snail kite population dropping so quickly, alarm bells starting going off,” Fletcher said.īut scientists were surprised to find that the population actually started to rebound. Photo by Robert Fletcher/University of FloridaĪt first, the birds couldn’t grasp the bigger snails because their beaks were too small, and scientists feared the population would continue to plummet. The invasive island apple snail is up to five times larger than the snail kite’s traditional food, the Florida apple snail. The latter are an invasive species and are up to five times bigger than the native snails the birds were used to. Historically they fed on Florida apple snails, but in 2004, island apple snails were introduced to the state from South America. Article contentĪnd it looked like things were only going to get worse for the birds. This advertisement has not loaded yet, but your article continues below. Manage Print Subscription / Tax Receipt.
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