The poor survival of shrunken first-year birds clearly contributes to the current population decline seen in red knots nowadays." This results in an evolutionary force towards smaller-sized birds with large bills, said the study published in the U.S. journal Science. Nowadays red knots are smaller, but since the short-billed small birds are selected against, the study suggested that they may evolve to have smaller bodies, with long bills. Updated Fri, May 13th 2016 at 10:29 GMT +3Red knots, a migrating bird species able to fly about 5,000 kilometers non-stop, are becoming smaller as temperatures warm in their Arctic breeding grounds, a study said Thursday. Only larger birds with long bill were able to reach the relatively deeply burrowed bivalves at Banc d'Arguin," van Gils explained.

Source: Standard Digital May 13, 2016 02:00 UTC