Suliformes
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White-bellied Booby ( Sula leucogaster ) |
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| Sharpe , 1891 |
The Suliformes are an order of birds that includes the gannets (Sulidae), the frigate birds (Fregatidae), the cormorants (Phalacrocoracidae) and the darters (Anhingidae). The different species of the order are represented as breeding birds from the subarctic through the tropics to the subantarctic. Four species can also be found in the German-speaking countries: the cormorant everywhere on freshwater in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, the common shag on the North Sea coast and near Heligoland, the dwarf shag with a small breeding colony in Austria and the gannet breeds on Heligoland.
features
Common to all families of the Suliformes is the structure of the feet, in which all four toes are connected by a web of webs, including the rear toe pointing forwards and inwards. Another feature common to all families is the lack of a brood spot and feathered skin in the throat area, which forms a more or less large throat pouch. Nostrils are closed or extremely stunted. The running leg ( tarsometatarsus ) is greatly shortened and only half as long as the carpometacarpus (metacarpal bones) or even shorter (not in the case of the cormorants).
With the exception of the frigate birds, all species of this order catch their food, which consists mainly of fish , under water. Frigate birds catch their prey in flight. While in darter and cormorants only the feathers below the cover plumage are water-repellent, in the other members of the order this is the case for the entire plumage.
Reproduction
It is typical for the bird species of this order that they establish large nesting colonies. They are often found on remote islands and cliffs. Most species build compact nests that are built by both partners. The young are helpless when hatching and are fed by the parent birds with choked up food.
Systematics
Together with the tropical birds (Phaethontidae) and the pelicans (Pelecanidae), the four families formed the order of the coarse pods (Pelecaniformes) until a few years ago . However, this order turned out to be non- monophyletic , that is, it did not contain all subgroups that descended from the most recent common ancestral form. The tropical birds are neither closely related to the pelicans nor to the other oarsopods, but the sister group of the Eurypygiformes . They now form an independent order, the Phaethontiformes.
The closest relatives of the pelicans, on the other hand, are the shoebill ( Balaeniceps rex ) and the hammerhead ( Scopus umbretta ), two birds that are native to tropical Africa and are classed as walking birds (Ciconiiformes) in the traditional system. Sister group of the clade formed by all three taxa are the herons (Ardeidae) and the ibises and spoonbills (Threskiornithidae). Sister group of the clade formed by all five taxa are the remaining copepods. In order to get back to monophyletic taxa, the International Ornithological Committee assigns all families of the walking birds except for the storks (Ciconiidae) to the Pelecaniformes . The remaining rudders are placed in the Suliformes order, which was introduced in 1891 by the English ornithologist Richard Bowdler Sharpe but was no longer used in later bird systems.
The likely family relationships are shown in the following cladogram.
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- ↑ a b c J. Bryan Nelson: Pelicans, Cormorants and their relatives. Oxford University Press, 2005, ISBN 0-19-857727-3 .
- ↑ a b Mayr, Gerald (2008): Avian higher-level phylogeny: well-supported clades and what we can learn from a phylogenetic analysis of 2954 morphological characters (PDF). J. Zool. Syst. Evol. Res. 46 (1): 63-72. doi: 10.1111 / j.1439-0469.2007.00433.x
- ↑ a b Jarvis et al. (2014): Whole-genome analyzes resolve early branches in the tree of life of modern birds . Science 1320 (2014); 346 DOI: 10.1126 / science.1253451
- ↑ a b c d Richard O. Prum et al .: A comprehensive phylogeny of birds (Aves) using targeted next-generation DNA sequencing. Nature, October 7, 2015; doi: 10.1038 / nature15697
- ↑ a b WorldBirdNames.org orders of Birds
- ↑ a b AOU Committee on Classification and Nomenclature (North & Middle America) Proposals 2008-C (PDF; 109 kB)
- ↑ Hackett et al .: A Phylogenomic Study of Birds Reveals Their Evolutionary History . Science 27 June 2008: Vol. 320. no. 5884, pp. 1763–1768 doi : 10.1126 / science.1157704