How Colombian Hummingbirds Are Linked To The Plants They Feed On

Colombian researcher Mónica Ramírez Burbano turned a fascination with looking at hummingbirds into a project to look at how these birds interact with the plants they feed on.

Ramirez, who is currently a stay-at-home mother, started her research about hummingbirds and the plants they use as nectar resources in the Munchique National Park, (southwest of Colombia), in the only location of Andean Cloud Forest where an endangered, endemic hummingbird species, the Colorful Puffleg (Eriocnemis mirabilis), has been spotted in the present day.

“I was very lucky to take a lot of data of the Colorful Puffleg and the other beautiful hummingbirds there, and I decided to take pollen samples from their feathers and bills (the pollen they carry when they use a flower looking for nectar) as well as pollen samples from the plants I saw being visited by hummingbirds (and others with the potential of being visited) with the idea to have data for future research,” she says.

Ramirez says that she started her research trying to understand what all the hummingbird species were using as nectar resources, and how they share or compete for them, as well as some characteristics of the nectar of the preferred plants.

“These mutualistic interactions are crucial for the maintenance of biodiversity since the plants used by hummingbirds need their visitation to flowers to guarantee their reproduction through pollination, while hummingbirds depend on these plants as food to survive,” she says, “This is an intricate network where some species are more vulnerable than others to things like climate change, habitat loss, or the loss of their partners; and, at the same time, some pairs of interactions and some systems of interactions are more vulnerable than others to human intervention.”

Ramirez says that at the beginning of her research experience, the fieldwork was quite challenging because although Munchique National Natural Park is an extremely beautiful location, it was dangerous due to the armed conflict, where guerrillas and the paramilitary army were present. However, she says it is critical to study these areas.

“Understanding these systems offers ecological foundations for conservation actions, in which the interaction networks approach allows us to analyze not just pairs of species but the whole system, including other variables that could explain their functioning and as well as their vulnerabilities,” she says.

From Small Town To Small Birds

Ramirez was born and grew up in Popayan, a small Andean city in the southwest of Colombia.

“I decided to be a biologist thanks to a good high school teacher who showed me the fun of discovering nature, joined with my fascination with the beauty and complexity of nature; hummingbirds; and their relationship with plants,” she says, “This interest was reinforced when my undergraduate advisor showed me the papers of Gary Stiles, a North American ornithologist who lived in Colombia since 1990.”

Ramirez says that several years later with her mother’s financial support, she had the opportunity to do her master’s degree at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in the Colombian capital of Bogota, with Gary Stiles as her thesis advisor.

“My advisor was the same author of the papers that inspired me when I was younger,” she says.

Ramirez finished her doctorate degree in December 2019 and had her child in April 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic was starting.

“Since then, I have been a stay–at–home mom, as well as working on some papers of my own and some collaborations with other scientists that have been working on the topic of hummingbird-plant interactions too,” she says, “Now, I am looking for an opportunity to work in post doctorate research, hopefully in another country, where my skills and experience can be useful to others and I could learn much more about how science is done from other kind of views and cultures, and hopefully where more logistics and funding are available.”

Another Colombian scientist studying Hummingbirds is Daniela Garzon.

In December of 2020, Garzon was invited to be part of a five woman expedition called “BIO: wings, songs and colors.” These wo men spent four days in the vicinity of Fresno, Tolima, eventually collecting 89 species, including some endemic species and those in danger of extinction.

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