• Fruit first, fancy footwork later: A new study finds the courtship dances of the manakins – one of the most charismatic groups of birds on Earth – trace back to changes deep in their ancestry and may be linked to their fruit-rich diet.
• Same answer, different routes: Manakins re-evolved a sense of sweet taste, as hummingbirds, songbirds and woodpeckers each did separately, by repurposing the receptor for savory taste.
• Genome-enabled discovery: Manakins are one of the most intensively-studied groups of birds: this first set of genomes provides resources to the community to explore the genomic changes underlying their unique behaviors and physiologies.