Lasting impact from severe weather.

• Position: Birds - Brief article

While studying a ground-nesting bird population near El Reno, a University of Oklahoma-led research team found that stress during a severe weather outbreak had manifested itself into malformations in the growing feathers of young birds. The team witnessed a phenomenon termed "pallid bands" in a large proportion of fledgling Grasshopper Sparrows and found spikes in the chemical signatures of pallid bands, which led to abnormalities in the new feathers.

'This may be the first example of severe thunderstorms being scientifically implicated in sub-lethal stress impacts on wildlife," says Jeremy Ross, postdoctoral research associate at the Oklahoma Biological Survey.

The groundbreaking study arose after the team observed a 44% incidence of pallid bands across the tail feathers of juvenile Grasshopper Sparrows captured near the site as part of another study. Ross and his collaborators hypothesized that the pallid bands were induced by the stress during an earlier severe weather outbreak when the bird population was pummeled...