The verdict is in on the Oak Park Hummingbird mystery:
Then I looked at the mitochondrial sequence, the gene nd2. The results weren't immediately clear to me, so I ran a couple of quick analyses; then I knew. It's 100% Rufous Hummingbird, Selasphorus rufus.
Animals determine information about food in two ways: sensory input and physiological feedback. The sensory input in this context is taste. A hummingbird uses taste to immediately determine the caloric quality of a food. A food that contains more calories will taste more desirable.
