Tubular noses
| Tubular noses | ||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cap shearwater ( Puffinus gravis ) |
||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||
|
||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||
| Procellariiformes | ||||||||||
| Fürbringer , 1888 |
The tube noses (Procellariiformes) are an order of mostly long-winged, short-tailed sea birds . They are pronounced deep-sea birds that mostly only visit the land to breed. Their distribution includes all seas and oceans of all climatic zones. Well-known representatives of the tube noses are the albatross and petrels .
features
The tubular noses are named after their peculiar beak, which is composed of several narrow, longitudinal pieces of horn. Two tubes sit on the beak, which serve to excrete the salt from the sea water absorbed during drinking.
It is also typical of tubular noses that their neck, tail and legs are short. The front three toes are webbed together. Many of the tube-nosed species also have long, narrow wings. One of the best-known species is the wandering albatross , which has the largest wingspan of all seabirds with a wingspan of over three meters .
Tube noses are ideally adapted to long, continuous flying. They are able to travel very long distances and withstand strong storms. Large species like the albatrosses predominantly sail and use the updrafts over the waves. The storm petrels , which also belong to the tube noses , alternately fly in a flutter and glide flight.
In the proventriculus ( glandular stomach ) of many species there is a secreted oil that is used to store energy and to feed the young birds and can be sprayed against attackers meters away as a strongly smelling secretion.
behavior
All tubular noses are more or less prone to colonization. In some species, such as the Northern Giant Petrel, there are only loose associations with a few breeding pairs that breed close together. Many others, however, form large to enormous colonies, each of which can comprise over two million pairs in the Cape Shearwaters, for example. The colonies are mostly on rocky islands or on cliffs, where the nests are safe from predatory mammals; that such places are not available in abundance may have favored the evolutionary development of colony breeding.
In particular, the large species such as albatrosses and giant petrels nest in an exposed place, while many smaller species dig tunnels in the ground. This warms the egg and the bird, the egg is not in danger of rolling away and, most importantly, the threat of attack by skuas or other enemies is reduced . Tubular noses that nest in burrows are almost always nocturnal, while those that nest open are diurnal with few exceptions.
A complex courtship ritual is known from the albatrosses , while the courtship in the other families is usually less spectacular and in the nocturnal species is limited to vocalizations and does not contain any visible gestures. Usually there is one brood per year, in the few tropical species there are also more broods; many albatrosses only breed every two years. Tube noses are monogamous , so try to mate with the partner of the previous brood. The nesting place is also preferably the same as last year. However, some couples lose their preferred nesting sites to rivals, which can lead to fights. In these it can happen that a weaker bird is pushed to the edge of the colony or that a bird of a species that actually nests in burrows is forced to lay its egg in the open due to lack of space.
All tubular noses only lay one egg. The hatching young bird is already wearing a down dress and is mobile to a certain extent, but grows extremely slowly. It can take two to nine months for a young tubular nose to leave the nest. In the first phase of rearing, one of the parent birds stays with the boy permanently and hides it under or close to his body. When it reaches a certain size, both parent birds look for food for themselves and their young at the same time. Feeding is done in all species with the adult bird grasping the young's beak at a right angle; then it chokes out stomach oil or food that is ingested by the young bird. The diet consists mainly of fish , cephalopods and crustaceans . Young birds are often fed a nutrient-rich stomach oil that, after the food has been digested, can be retained in the parent's stomach and carried along for a long time.
Fossil history
The oldest fossil creature, which is sometimes placed near the tubular noses, is Tytthostonyx glauconiticus from the late Cretaceous ; however, this is only known from a humerus , which also has similarities to the oarpods . The fact that this sparse find belongs to an early representative of the tubular noses is made even more improbable by the molecular clock , which puts the likely origin of the tubular noses in the Eocene .
The earliest reliably determinable representatives of the tubular noses are known from the Oligocene . The genera Rupelornis and Diomedeoides could have been early albatrosses, but rather similar animals from a separate family Diomedeoididae.
Representatives of the real albatrosses, petrels and petrels have been documented since the Miocene . These include the extinct albatross genus Plotornis and representatives of the recent genera Diomedea , Oceanodroma and Fulmarus . The diving petrels appear fossil for the first time in the Pliocene .
Systematics
External system
|
|
|
|
The Guillemot petrol (right) got its name because of the similarity with guillemots (left).
|
||
The external similarities of tube noses with seabirds from the order of the plover-like - like seagulls and alkenbirds - are due to convergent evolution , not to closer kinship. Morphological analyzes already came to the conclusion that the penguins and tube noses rather go back to a common ancestor; Both have webbed feet , two consecutive down clothes, two carotid arteries and a similar structure of the nasal bone and the palate . This assumed relationship was confirmed in 1990 in DNA analyzes.
Internal system
There are four families:
- Albatrosses (Diomedeidae)
- Northern petrels (Hydrobatidae)
- Southern petrels (Oceanitidae)
- Petrels (Procellariidae)
literature
- Michael Brooke: Albatrosses and Petrels across the World . Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-850125-0
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Daniel D. Roby, Jan RE Taylor, Allen R. Place: " Significance of stomach oil for reproduction in seabirds: An interspecies cross-fostering experiment ", The Auk 114 (4), pages 725-736, 1997
- ^ J. Warham: " The Incidence, Function and ecological significance of petrel stomach oils " Proceedings of the New Zealand Ecological Society 24 , pages 84-93, 1976
- ↑ Gerald Mayr, Stefan Peters, Siegfried Rietschel: Petrel-like Birds with a Peculiar Foot Morphology from the Oligocene of Germany and Belgium (Aves: Procellariiformes) . In: Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 2002, Issue 22 (3), pp. 667-676
- ^ Charles Sibley, Jon Ahlquist: Phylogeny and Classification of Birds - A Study in Molecular Evolution. Yale University Press, 1990
- ↑ David W. Winkler, Shawn M. Billerman, Irby J. Lovette: Bird Families of the World: A Guide to the Spectacular Diversity of Birds. Lynx Edicions (2015), ISBN 978-8494189203 . Page 163–171.