Mixed offsprings is a scientific marvel?

[theking]

A blue jay and a green jay mated, researchers say. Their offspring is a scientific marvel

What do you get when you cross a blue jay with a green jay? That’s not the start of a joke, but the subject of a new study that aims to describe a hybrid bird never encountered before in the wild.

The bigger question scientists are puzzling over, though, is why does the mystery bird exist?

“We think it’s the first observed vertebrate that’s hybridized as a result of two species both expanding their ranges due, at least in part, to climate change,” said Brian Stokes, a doctoral student of biology at the University of Texas at Austin and first author of the study published September 10 in the journal Ecology and Evolution.

The vividly colored green jay is found in parts of South and Central America, Mexico and a limited portion of southern Texas. But since 2000, the tropical bird’s territory has expanded north by hundreds of kilometers — more than 100 miles and about 2 degrees of latitude — along the Rio Grande and up toward San Antonio, said study coauthor Timothy Keitt.

Avid birders across Central Texas have taken note, sharing sightings of the emerald birds on social media and apps like eBird. Keitt, a professor of integrative biology at UT Austin, has been keeping tabs on their rapid northward creep since 2018. “They’re pretty unmistakable in the field,” he told CNN. “You see a green jay and you absolutely know that it’s a green jay.”