''Amaurornis'' is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

of birds in the rail family

Rallidae The rails, or Rallidae, are a large cosmopolitan family of small- to medium-sized, ground-living birds. The family exhibits considerable diversity and includes the crakes, coots, and gallinules. Many species are associated with wetlands, althoug ...

. The species in this genus are typically called bush-hens. A

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

subtribe, Amaurornithina, was proposed for this genus.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Amaurornis'' was erected by the German naturalist

Ludwig Reichenbach Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach (8 January 1793 – 17 March 1879) was a German botanist and ornithologist. It was he who first requested Leopold Blaschka to make a set of glass marine invertebrate models for scientific education and museu ...

in 1853 with the plain bush-hen (''Amaurornis olivacea'') as the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

. The name comes from the Greek ''amauros'', meaning "dusky" or "brown" and ''ornis'', meaning "bird". The New Guinea flightless rail was sometimes included in this genus, but more often held to constitute a distinct

genus ''Megacrex''. The first

cladistic Cladistics (; ) is an approach to biological classification in which organisms are categorized in groups (" clades") based on hypotheses of most recent common ancestry. The evidence for hypothesized relationships is typically shared derived char ...

studies of rails, based on

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

, strongly suggested that ''Amaurornis'' as traditionally defined is not

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

, and that several species placed here are in fact closer to the small crakes traditionally placed in ''

Porzana ''Porzana'' is a genus of birds in the crake and rail family, Rallidae. Its scientific name is derived from Venetian terms for small rails. The spotted crake (''P. porzana'') is the type species. Taxonomy The genus ''Porzana'' was erected by th ...

''. This was subsequently confirmed by molecular data. However, these smallish species are probably not close to the large members of ''Porzana'' either, and would warrant re-establishment of the old genus ''Zapornia''.

Species

The genus contains five species:

References

Bird genera Rallidae Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxa named by Ludwig Reichenbach {{Gruiformes-stub