Geronticus

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Geronticus
Systematics
Trunk : Chordates (chordata)
Sub-stem : Vertebrates (vertebrata)
Class : Birds (aves)
Order : Pelecaniformes
Family : Ibises and spoonbills (Threskiornithidae)
Genre : Geronticus
Scientific name
Geronticus
Wagler , 1832
WaldrappIbis2010.jpg
Smooth-necked ibis.jpg


The bald ibis ( Geronticus eremita ) and the smooth-necked black ibis ( Geronticus calvus ) are the only surviving representatives of the genus Geronticus .

Geronticus ( Syn .: Comatibis ) is a small genus of birds from the ibis and spoonbills family (Threskiornithidae). In addition to five fossil species that are known from the Miocene to the Pleistocene period, there are only two surviving species today, the bald ibis ( Geronticus eremita ) and the smooth-necked ibis ( Geronticus calvus ). The epithet is derived from the Greek term “Gérontos” (γέρωντος, “the old man”), based on the bald head of these dark-feathered birds, which is reminiscent of an old man.

The bald ibis and the smooth-necked ibis are medium-sized, 70 to 80 cm tall, completely dark ibises with an unfledged head, face and neck, and the bald ibis with elongated feathers. The plumage is iridescent black with purple, bronze and green sheen; the neck feathers form a frill. The long beak is curved downwards, the legs are red.

Recent species

Bald ibis

Until it was finally classified in the genus Geronticus in the late 19th century, the bald ibis had a very eventful taxonomic history. One of the first historians who most likely mentioned this bird in literature was Pliny the Elder in his work Naturalis historia . He described the phalacrocorax (bald raven) that was caught in the Alps and was also found in the Balearic Islands. In 1555 Conrad Gessner sketched the bald ibis for the first time in his book Histora animalium (Volume III: Icones avium) and gave it the scientific name Corvus sylvaticus . However, he also mentioned that this bird could be a black ibis, according to naturalist Petrus Bellonius .

"Corvus selvaticus, Ibis nigra secundum Bellonium, ni fallor."

The next scientist to study the bald ibis was Ulisse Aldrovandi (also known as Aldrovandus) in his Ornithologiae libri XII , published in 1603. He had no doubt that Pliny’s bald raven and Gessner's bald ibis were identical. In 1738 the Briton Eleazar Albin made an engraving of the Waldrapps. In 1750, Jacob Theodor Klein described the bird in his work Historiae Avium Prodomus as the “mountain hoopoe” ( Upupa montana ). In 1758, Carl von Linné also mistakenly placed it in the genus of the hoopoe and called it Upupa eremita . In 1766 Linnaeus corrected the name to Corvus eremita .

There was a significant turning point in 1805 in the 2nd edition of Johann Matthäus Bechstein's work Charitable Natural History of Birds in Germany , in which Gessner's bald ibis is referred to as nothing more than an Alpine chough ( Pyrrhocorax graculus ). This non-acceptance of the Waldrapps was also reflected decades later in ornithological literature. For example, Carl Gottlob Friderich wrote in his work Natural History of German Birds in 1891 :

“The wood raven ( Corvus silvaticus Gesner ) is an artificially defaced darning specimen and is made up of parts from various birds. This bogey is also in Linne's works. "

In 1825 the research history of the crested ibis began, which Eduard Rüppell mentioned as the noun nudum in 1835 and officially described as ibis comata in 1845 . On February 20, 1825, the Danish weapons master Heinrich Schulz called Falkenstein, as a companion of the explorers Friedrich Wilhelm Hemprich and Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg , shot dead in the Asyr Mountains between Rachmen and Bir el Marahaba near the now dilapidated port city of Gumfuda on the Red Sea coast in Ethiopia two black ibises. Ehrenberg wanted to describe the supposedly new species as Ibis hemprichii in honor of his friend Hemprich, who died of malaria in June 1825 . A color plate was made for a planned edition of the work Symbolae Physicae between 1828 and 1832 , but the preparation was discontinued in 1832, so that the name Ibis hemprichii must be regarded as a noun nudum.

In 1832 Johann Georg Wagler established the genus Geronticus and classified the smooth-necked black horse as a type species. In a footnote, he also mentioned an undescribed ibis species, referring to the specimens collected by Hemprich and Ehrenberg in 1825.

"Spec. nov. ex Aegypto, Gerontico calvo proxima. "

In 1844, George Robert Gray listed Geronticus comatus and Geronticus calvus in his List of Specimens of Birds in the Collection of the British Museum. Part III. Gallinae, Grallae and Anseres . In addition, he also listed the Warzenibis ( Pseudibis papillosa ), the straw-necked ibis ( Threskiornis spinicollis ) and crested ibis ( Nipponia nippon ) in the genus Geronticus . In his description of 1845, Rüppell listed Geronticus as a subgenus of the genus Ibis and placed the bird, which he gave the common name of the hungry bugger, into the heron family (Ardeidae).

In 1850 Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach introduced the genus Comatibis for the Schopfibis. Geronticus comatus or Comatibis comata were the valid scientific names in the specialist literature for a longer period of time (e.g. in Conspectus generum avium (1850) by Charles Lucien Bonaparte , in Victor Loches' Catalog des mammifères et des oiseaux (1858) or in Illustrirtes Thierleben. A general knowledge of the animal kingdom (1865) by Alfred Brehm ).

None of the aforementioned authors established a connection between Gessner's bald ibis and Rüppell's Schopfibis until Ernst Hartert , Walter Rothschild and Otto Kleinschmidt used specimens from Birecik, Turkey, to prove that both birds were identical and that Hemprich and Ehrenberg were therefore the in Europe had rediscovered the bald ibis. Hartert introduced the combination Comatibis eremita in the same year and Kleinschmidt in 1899 the combination Geronticus eremita which is valid today .

Smooth-necked black horse

The smooth-necked black horse was discovered at the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa in 1772 , portrayed by Georg Forster in 1780 and first described by Pieter Boddaert as Tantalus calvus in 1783 . In the same year, Georges-Louis Leclerc de Buffon referred to him as "Courlis à tête nue" (German: bald curlew). Other names were Ibis calva ( Viell. ), Tantalus niger ( Gmelin ) and Tantalus capensis ( JR Forster ). In 1832 Johann Georg Wagler placed it in the new genus Geronticus .

Fossil species

The oldest known fossil of the genus Geronticus comes from France. It was found in the Sansan fossil site and consists of the distal end of a right humerus . The age of the bone fragment is dated to the late Miocene (12 or 14 million years ago). Alphonse Milne-Edwards originally thought the fossil was a heron and named it Ardea perplexa in his first description in 1868 . In 2000, Jacques Cheneval subjected the bone to a closer examination and established a relationship to the bald ibis. Then the taxon was named Geronticus perplexus .

In 1998 Zlatozar Boev described the species Geronticus balcanicus from Bulgaria , whose fossil remains are dated to an age of 1.85 million years. It probably belongs to the ancestral line of Geronticus eremita .

In 2010 Denis Geraads and Cécile Mourer-Chauviré described the species Geronticus olsoni , which they named after Storrs Lovejoy Olson . The fossil remains come from the Ahl al Oughlam fossil site in Morocco and are dated to the Upper Pliocene (2.5 million years ago). Geronticus olsoni was probably larger than Geronticus eremita , Geronticus calvus, or Geronticus apelex .

Two fossil species are known from South Africa , which probably belong to the ancestral line of the smooth-necked rapids ( Geronticus calvus ):

1985 Storrs Lovejoy Olson described the form Geronticus apelex , which is known from the early Pliocene. The epithet a- (for without) and pelex (helmet) comes from the Greek and refers to the absence of an extensive bony occiput, as occurs in modern geronticus species.

In 2019, Marco Pavia described the fossil ibis taxon Geronticus thackerayi from the Kromdraai fossil deposit in Gauteng province , which he named after the South African paleontologist John Francis Thackeray . The age of the species has provisionally been dated to the transition period from the Pliocene to the Pleistocene .

literature

  • Ottó Herman : Ornithologia Historica: The Bald Raven, * (Geronticus eremita) his monument in Hungary. Aquila, Volume 10, 1903, pp. 35-65
  • Ludwig Hopf : The Waldrapp (Comatibis eremita Hartert ), a lost European bird. In: Annual Books of the Association for Fatherland Natural History, No. 63, 1907, pp. 273–278
  • Jean Strohl : Conrad Gessner's "Waldrapp". Attempt to supplement and text-critical order of the existing material. In: Quarterly journal of the Natural Research Society in Zurich, No. 62, 1917, pp. 501–538
  • Hans Kummerlöwe : Waldrapp, Geronticus eremita (LINNAEUS, 1758), and Smoothnackenrapp, Geronticus calvus (BODDAERT, 1783): On the history of their research and the current situation. Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, No. 81, 1978, pp. 319–349
  • Leslie H. Brown , Emil K. Urban and Kenneth Newman: Geronticus In: The Birds of Africa, Volume 1: Ostriches and Birds of Prey , Bloomsbury Publishing, 1982, p. 202
  • Anita Albus : The miraculous Waldrapp In: From rare birds S. Fischer Verlag GmbH, 2005, ISBN 978-3-10-000620-2 , pp. 73-114

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Leslie H. Brown, Emil K. Urban, Kenneth Newman: Geronticus In: The Birds of Africa , Volume 1: Ostriches and Birds of Prey , Bloomsbury Publishing, 1982, p. 202
  2. ^ Conrad Gessner: Icones avium , 1555
  3. ^ Eduard Rüppell: New vertebrates belonging to the fauna of Abyssinia: Birds, Volume 2 , 1835, p. 48
  4. ↑ a b Eduard Rüppell: Systematic overview of the birds of North-East Africa, together with illustration and description of fifty species, some of which are unknown, some of which have not yet been illustrated . S. Schmerber'sche Buchhandlung, Frankfurt 1845 doi : 10.5962 / bhl.title.51961
  5. ↑ a b Hans Kummerlöwe: Waldrapp, Geronticus eremita (LINNAEUS, 1758), and Glattnackenrapp, Geronticus calvus (BODDAERT, 1783): On the history of their research and the current situation. Annals of the Natural History Museum in Vienna, No. 81, 1978, pp. 319–349
  6. ↑ Johann Georg Wagler: New clans and genera of mammals and birds . In: Isis von Oken . 1832, pp. 1218-1235.
  7. ^ Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach: Handbook of the special ornithology: Avium systema naturale. The Natural System of Birds , Expedition of the Most Complete Natural History, 1850, pages 26, XIV.
  8. ^ Walter Rothschild, Ernst Hartert, Otto Kleinschmidt: Comatibis eremita (Linné), to European Bird . Novitates Zoologicae. Vol. IV, 1897, pp. 371-377.
  9. ↑ Otto Kleinschmidt: Addendum (Waldrapp, Geronticus eremita (L.)) In: Carl Richard Hennicke (Hrsg.): Naumann, Natural History of the Birds of Central Europe, Volume VII: Ibises, Flying Grouse, Bustards, Cranes, Rallen , Gera, 1899, p 199-203
  10. ↑ Jacques Cheneval: L'avifaune de Sansan. Mémoires du Muséum national d'histoire naturelle 183, 2000, pp. 321–388
  11. ^ ZN Boev: Presence of bald ibises (Geronticus Wagler, 1832) (Threskionithidae - Aves) in the Late Pliocene of Bulgaria. Geologica Balcanica 28, 1998, pp. 45-52.
  12. ↑ C. Mourer-Chauviré, D. Geraads: The upper Pliocene avifauna of Ahl al Oughlam, Morocco. Systematics and biogeography. Records of the Australian Museum 62, 2010, pp. 157-184.
  13. ↑ Storrs L. Olson: Early Pliocene ibises (Aves, Plataleidae) from South-Western Cape Province, South Africa. Annals of the South African Museum, Volume 97 (3), 1985, pp. 57-69.
  14. ↑ Marco Pavia: Geronticus thackerayi, sp. nov. (Aves, Threskiornithidae), a new ibis from the hominin-bearing locality of Kromdraai (Cradle of Humankind, Gauteng, South Africa). Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, 2019 e1647433