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Numididae
Guineafowl (; sometimes called "pet speckled hens" or "original fowl") are birds of the family Numididae in the order Galliformes. They are endemic to Africa and rank among the oldest of the gallinaceous birds. Phylogenetics, Phylogenetically, they branched off from the core Galliformes after the Cracidae (chachalacas, guans, and curassows) and before the Odontophoridae (New World quail). An Eocene fossil lineage ''Telecrex'' has been associated with guineafowl; ''Telecrex'' inhabited Mongolia, and may have given rise to the oldest of the true Phasianidae, phasianids, such as blood pheasants and Crossoptilon, eared pheasants, which Evolution, evolved into high-altitude, montane-adapted species with the rise of the Tibetan Plateau. While modern guineafowl species are endemic to Africa, the helmeted guineafowl has been Introduced species, introduced as a domesticated bird widely elsewhere. Taxonomy and systematics This is a list of guineafowl species, presented in taxonomic o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guineafowl
Guineafowl (; sometimes called "pet speckled hens" or "original fowl") are birds of the family Numididae in the order Galliformes. They are endemic to Africa and rank among the oldest of the gallinaceous birds. Phylogenetically, they branched off from the core Galliformes after the Cracidae (chachalacas, guans, and curassows) and before the Odontophoridae (New World quail). An Eocene fossil lineage ''Telecrex'' has been associated with guineafowl; ''Telecrex'' inhabited Mongolia, and may have given rise to the oldest of the true phasianids, such as blood pheasants and eared pheasants, which evolved into high-altitude, montane-adapted species with the rise of the Tibetan Plateau. While modern guineafowl species are endemic to Africa, the helmeted guineafowl has been introduced as a domesticated bird widely elsewhere. Taxonomy and systematics This is a list of guineafowl species, presented in taxonomic order. Phylogeny Cladogram based on a study by De Chen and collabora ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Galliformes
Galliformes is an order of heavy-bodied ground-feeding birds that includes turkeys, chickens, quail, and other landfowl. Gallinaceous birds, as they are called, are important in their ecosystems as seed dispersers and predators, and are often reared by humans for their meat and eggs, or hunted as game birds. The order contains about 290 species, inhabiting every continent except Antarctica, and divided into five families: Phasianidae (including chicken, quail, partridges, pheasants, turkeys, peafowl (peacocks) and grouse), Odontophoridae (New World quail), Numididae (guinea fowl), Cracidae (including chachalacas and curassows), and Megapodiidae (incubator birds like malleefowl and brush-turkeys). They adapt to most environments except for innermost deserts and perpetual ice. Many gallinaceous species are skilled runners and escape predators by running rather than flying. Males of most species are more colorful than the females, with often elaborate courtship behaviors t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telecrex
''Telecrex'' is an extinct genus of birds related to guineafowl, containing two species, ''Telecrex grangeri'' (the type species) and ''Telecrex peregrinus''. ''T. grangeri'' is known from a single partial femur from Eocene deposits in Inner Mongolia, while ''T. peregrinus'' was found in France. Taxonomy The holotype and only known specimen of ''Telecrex grangeri'', AMNH 2942, is a partial right femur collected from the Eocene Irdin Manha Formation. The distal end and part of the trochanter are missing. The new genus ''Telecrex'' was described by Wetmore in 1934 and assigned to the Rallidae. In 1974, the holotype was reexamined by Storrs Olson, who concluded that it was in fact an early relative of guineafowl, a family previously only known from Africa and Europe. The holotype of ''Telecrex peregrinus'', Vienna Natural History Museum 1988/28/1 was collected near Lalbenque Lalbenque (; oc, L'Albenca) is a commune in the Lot department in south-western France. See also * ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Guttera
''Guttera'' is a genus of birds in the family Numididae. Established by Johann Georg Wagler in 1832, it contains two species: * Plumed guineafowl, ''Guttera plumifera'' * Crested guineafowl, ''Guttera pucherani'' The name ''Guttera'' is a combination of the Latin words ''gutta'', meaning "spot" and ''-fera'', meaning "bearing" (from ''ferre'': to bear). The two species are found in forests of sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is, geographically, the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lies south of the Sahara. These include West Africa, East Africa, Central Africa, and Southern Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the List of sov .... Unlike other guineafowl, they have a distinctive black crest. References {{Taxonbar, from=Q1028983 Bird genera ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Phasianidae
The Phasianidae are a family (biology), family of heavy, ground-living birds, which includes pheasants, partridges, junglefowl, chickens, Turkey bird, turkeys, Old World quail, and peafowl. The family includes many of the most popular Game (hunting), gamebirds. The family is a large one and includes 185 species divided into 54 genera. It was formerly broken up into two subfamily (biology), subfamilies, the Phasianinae and the Perdicinae. However, this treatment is now known to be paraphyly, paraphyletic and polyphyly, polyphyletic, respectively, and more recent evidence supports breaking it up into two subfamilies: Rollulinae and Phasianinae, with the latter containing multiple Tribe (biology), tribes within two Clade, clades. The New World quail (Odontophoridae) and guineafowl (Numididae) were formerly sometimes included in this family, but are now typically placed in families of their own; conversely, grouse and turkey (bird), turkeys, formerly often treated as distinct families ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Evolution
Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation tends to exist within any given population as a result of genetic mutation and recombination. Evolution occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection (including sexual selection) and genetic drift act on this variation, resulting in certain characteristics becoming more common or more rare within a population. The evolutionary pressures that determine whether a characteristic is common or rare within a population constantly change, resulting in a change in heritable characteristics arising over successive generations. It is this process of evolution that has given rise to biodiversity at every level of biological organisation, including the levels of species, individual organisms, and molecules. The theory of evolution by ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tibetan Plateau
The Tibetan Plateau (, also known as the Qinghai–Tibet Plateau or the Qing–Zang Plateau () or as the Himalayan Plateau in India, is a vast elevated plateau located at the intersection of Central, South and East Asia covering most of the Tibet Autonomous Region, most of Qinghai, western half of Sichuan, Southern Gansu provinces in Western China, southern Xinjiang, Bhutan, the Indian regions of Ladakh and Lahaul and Spiti (Himachal Pradesh) as well as Gilgit-Baltistan in Pakistan, northwestern Nepal, eastern Tajikistan and southern Kyrgyzstan. It stretches approximately north to south and east to west. It is the world's highest and largest plateau above sea level, with an area of (about five times the size of Metropolitan France). With an average elevation exceeding and being surrounded by imposing mountain ranges that harbor the world's two highest summits, Mount Everest and K2, the Tibetan Plateau is often referred to as "the Roof of the World". The Tibetan Plateau ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Introduced Species
An introduced species, alien species, exotic species, adventive species, immigrant species, foreign species, non-indigenous species, or non-native species is a species living outside its native distributional range, but which has arrived there by human activity, directly or indirectly, and either deliberately or accidentally. Non-native species can have various effects on the local ecosystem. Introduced species that become established and spread beyond the place of introduction are considered naturalized. The process of human-caused introduction is distinguished from biological colonization, in which species spread to new areas through "natural" (non-human) means such as storms and rafting. The Latin expression neobiota captures the characteristic that these species are ''new'' biota to their environment in terms of established biological network (e.g. food web) relationships. Neobiota can further be divided into neozoa (also: neozoons, sing. neozoon, i.e. animals) and neophyt ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. Other ways of defining species include their karyotype, DNA sequence, morphology, behaviour or ecological niche. In addition, paleontologists use the concept of the chronospecies since fossil reproduction cannot be examined. The most recent rigorous estimate for the total number of species of eukaryotes is between 8 and 8.7 million. However, only about 14% of these had been described by 2011. All species (except viruses) are given a two-part name, a "binomial". The first part of a binomial is the genus to which the species belongs. The second part is called the specific name or the specific epithet (in botanical nomenclature, also sometimes i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
