How Well Do We Really Know Cardinals?

Few birds are as well-known or beloved as the Northern Cardinal. The quintessential red (and sometimes yellow) species serves as an emblem for seven states and countless sports teams—yet much about it still remains a mystery, as shown by a recent Ecology and Evolution study on a pair of Southwestern populations.

The research, led by scientists at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, confirms that cardinals from the Sonoran and Chihuahuan deserts don’t interbreed, despite being separated by just 120 miles of plains habitat. While the Sonoran group is already considered a subspecies, these findings hint that it may need to be reclassified as its own species. To put it into perspective, that would mean that the Arizona Cardinals would rep a different bird than the St. Louis Cardinals.