Neoaves 2 Flashcards
(Charadriiformes) Shorebirds and their relatives: plovers, avocets, stilts, oystercatchers, stone curlews, sandpipers, gulls, woodcocks, terns, skuas, auks etc.
387 species
- Physical: skull, vertebral column, syrinx
- Molecular similarities
- Three major clade: Plovers, Gulls, Sandpipers
Major clade 1 Plovers:
- Small to medium sized
- Long legs
- Probing bills
- Most monagamous
Sheathbill and allies
- Only bird endemic to Antarctic/Subantartic
- Sheath on bill
- Penguin feces
- Kleptoparasite
Plover-Stone Curlew (thick-knees)
Worldwide-except North America
- Crepuscular-nocturnal
- Large eyes
Plovers-Monotypic families
- Magellanic (S.A.)
- Crab plover (Indian Ocean)
- Ibisbill (Asia)
- Egyptian plover-Sub sahara Africa (crocodile bird)
Major clade 2: Sandpipers and relatives
-Avocets, stilts
All continents
-Long neck, long legs, some hallux vestigial, avocet webbed
lapwings
Worldwide
Sandpipers, snipes, turnstones, phalaropes
Worldwide
-Diverse matting systems
Pranticoles, coursers
Warm Old World
Major Clade 3: Gulls and relatives…+ Buttonquails
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Buttonquails
Tropical, warm parts of old world
- Lack a crop
- Cursorial 3 toes
- Don’t readily fly
- Polyandrous
- Unique vocal organ-enlarged trachea, inflatable bulb in esophagus
Gulls, Terns, skimmers, Skuas, Jaegers, Puffins, Auks, Murres, Guillemonts
-Long-winged, short-legged, palmate web footed birds
Gulls, terns, skimmers
Worldwide
Skuas, jaegers
Polar regions
- Kleptoparasites, predators
- Baby penguin murderer
Auks, murres, puffins, guillemots
Northern Oceans
- Large head, short neck
- Diving birds
- One specie can’t fly
