Very low force-generating ability and unusually high temperature-dependency in hummingbird flight muscle fibers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Hummingbird flight muscle is estimated to have among the highest mass-specific power output among vertebrates, based on aerodynamic models. However, little is known about the fundamental contractile properties of their remarkable flight muscles. We hypothesized that hummingbird pectoralis fibers generate relatively low force when activated in a tradeoff for high shortening speeds associated with the characteristic high wingbeat frequencies that are required for sustained hovering. Our objective was to measure maximal force-generating ability (maximal force/cross-sectional area, Po/CSA) in single, skinned fibers from the pectoralis and supracoracoideus muscles, which power the wing downstroke and upstroke, respectively, in hummingbirds (Calypte anna) and in another similarly sized species, zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), which also has a very high wingbeat frequency during flight but does not perform a sustained hover. Mean Po/CSA in hummingbird pectoralis fibers was very low - 1.6, 6.1 and 12.2 kN m(-2), at 10, 15 and 20°C, respectively. Po/CSA in finch pectoralis fibers was also very low (for both species, ~5% of the reported Po/CSA of chicken pectoralis fast fibers at 15°C). Q10-force (force generated at 20°C/force generated at 10°C) was very high for hummingbird and finch pectoralis fibers (mean=15.3 and 11.5, respectively) compared with rat slow and fast fibers (1.8 and 1.9, respectively). Po/CSA in hummingbird leg fibers was much higher than in pectoralis fibers at each temperature, and the mean Q10-force was much lower. Thus, hummingbird and finch pectoralis fibers have an extremely low force-generating ability compared with other bird and mammalian limb fibers, and an extremely high temperature dependence of force generation. However, the extrapolated maximum force-generating ability of hummingbird pectoralis fibers in vivo (~48 kN m(-2)) is substantially higher than the estimated requirements for hovering flight of C. anna. The unusually low Po/CSA of hummingbird and zebra finch pectoralis fibers may reflect a constraint imposed by a need for extremely high contraction frequencies, especially during hummingbird hovering.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".