Hybrid Duck Study: SHOT A HYBRID?

CONSIDER DONATING IT TO SCIENCE!

Why do we see so many kinds of hybrid duck and geese?

Mallard x Pintail, Mallard x American Wigeon, and Mallard Gadwall hybrids are regular, and Gadwall x Green-wing Teal hybrids are shot every season. The list goes on and on….

Wild hybrids between distinct species are more common in waterfowl than in other groups of birds. Nonetheless, hybrid ducks and geese are rare enough that assembling a sample for scientific study is impossible without the cooperation of hunters. Crowdsourcing through North American hunters seems like the only way to study their origin and, thus, to understand why hybrids are reported between so many species combinations of waterfowl. Thus our plea that hunters who have shot a hybrid consider donating it to this study (see sidebar to the left).

We are NOT currently interested in Mallard x black hybrids. Here's why.

But we are interested in any other wild-taken hybrid ducks and geese. We are also keen to receive blue-phased Ross's Geese, which may be hybrids between blue-phased Snow Geese and normally white Ross's Geese. These would be especially valuable if they were intermediate in size between Lesser Snow Geese and Ross's Geese, suggesting they might be F1 hybrids.

If you have taken a hybrid that we can include in this study, please contact me (rohwer@uw.edu) or Burke Collections Manager, Chris Wood (puffinus@uw.edu; cell 253-740-1071) directly, and not through this forum. Chris will arrange shipping and can provide tissue vials for hybrids that are going to mounts. Also, please check out the Burke Ornithology homepage for more information on the Museum's collection of birds from around the world.

What We Need from the Hunting Community

Ideally, we would like to receive whole birds that will be preserved as scientific specimens, always available to researchers, students, and artists at the University of Washington Burke Museum. For each of these hybrids we would save a study skin, a fully extended wing, and a tissue sample. Genetic analysis will tell us the mother and father species for first generation hybrids (crosses between pure parental), and allow us to assess whether the hybrid is a first generation hybrid or a backcross between a first generation hybrid and one of the parental species. The study skin and the extended wing will allow us to describe the plumage of first and later generation hybrids in detail, hopefully leading to an illustrated guide to first and later generation hybrids. Artists will need these specimens to make proper illustrations!

We understand that some hunters will not give up a hybrid they want mounted. Although skin and wing specimens are far more valuable to the scientific community, good photos and a tissue sample, taken when the bird is being mounted, may allow us to include it in the study of hybrid origins. But whole birds offer much more. They can be used to describe plumages of different hybrid generations. They should help find genes coding for plumage differences in the parental species. And, we hope they will help understand why some hybrids are not simple "blends" of the parental species, instead showing characters not seen in either parental species.