''Astrapia'' (Vieillot, 1816) is a
genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...
of
birds-of-paradise
The birds-of-paradise are members of the family Paradisaeidae of the order Passeriformes. The majority of species are found in eastern Indonesia, Papua New Guinea and eastern Australia. The family has 44 species in 17 genera. The members of ...
. The genus contains five species, all endemic to
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
. The males have highly
iridescent plumage and remarkably long tails. Females are duller and have shorter tails.
Barnes's astrapia is a hybrid produced by the interbreeding of
Princess Stephanie's astrapia and the
ribbon-tailed astrapia
The ribbon-tailed astrapia, also known as Shaw Mayer's astrapia (''Astrapia mayeri''), is a species of bird-of-paradise.
The ribbon-tailed astrapia is distributed and endemic to subalpine forests in western part of the central highlands of Papua ...
.
[ Brown: Carina.]
Taxonomy and systematics
''Astrapia'' is derived from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
'
''astrapios''
' or '
''astrapaios, meaning lightning or a flash of lightning, possibly a reference to the iridescence of the plumage.
The genus is suggested to be
monophyletic, roughly six million years old, and forms a sister-group with the two species in the genus ''
Paradigalla''.
''Astrapia'' and ''
Paradigalla'' are members of a larger clade that includes the other long-tail birds-of-paradise from the genus ''
Epimachus''.
Species
*
Arfak astrapia, ''Astrapia nigra''
*
Splendid astrapia, ''Astrapia splendidissima''
*
Ribbon-tailed astrapia
The ribbon-tailed astrapia, also known as Shaw Mayer's astrapia (''Astrapia mayeri''), is a species of bird-of-paradise.
The ribbon-tailed astrapia is distributed and endemic to subalpine forests in western part of the central highlands of Papua ...
, ''Astrapia mayeri''
*
Princess Stephanie's astrapia, ''Astrapia stephaniae''
*
Huon astrapia, ''Astrapia rothschildi''
Within the genus, ''A. nigra'' and ''A. splendidissima'' are sister species, which together are sister to a clade that includes ''A. rothschildi'', ''A. mayeri'' and ''A. stephaniae'' with ''A. rothschildi'' as the basal member.
Description
The five species of the genus ''Astrapia'' are endemic to
New Guinea
New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torr ...
in the mountains of
Volgelkop, the central ranges and the
Huon Peninsula
Huon Peninsula is a large rugged peninsula on the island of New Guinea in Morobe Province, eastern Papua New Guinea. It is named after French explorer Jean-Michel Huon de Kermadec. The peninsula is dominated by the steep Saruwaged and Finisterr ...
. Of these, three are
allopatric—''A. nigra'', ''A. splendidissima'' and ''A. rothschildi''. The other two—''A. mayeri'' and ''A. stephaniae—''overlap with each other at the margins of their respective elevation ranges in a small part of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
's central highlands.
All species within ''Astrapia'' exhibit
sexual dimorphism
Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most an ...
. Adult males appear mostly jet-black under most lighting conditions, with highly iridescent greenish-blue heads, an intensely reflective coppery-orange band on the upper breast and either a deep violet (nearly black) or mostly white tail.
The three allopatric species also have iridescent green lower abdomen. Adult females are duller blackish-brown, with smaller, white smudged tails running down their lengths.
Behavior
Mating and breeding
Breeding behaviors are not well known, but all species are thought to be
polygamous
Crimes
Polygamy (from Late Greek (') "state of marriage to many spouses") is the practice of marrying multiple spouses. When a man is married to more than one wife at the same time, sociologists call this polygyny. When a woman is marrie ...
, with promiscuous males that use arboreal display sites, and with females providing all parental care.
Summaries from species accounts indicate a few simple behaviors including a form of hoping back and forth between branches and an inverted display posture in A. rothschildi.
At traditional sites in the forest canopy, ''
Astrapia stephaniae'' is known to form
leks
A lek is an aggregation of male animals gathered to engage in competitive displays and courtship rituals, known as lekking, to entice visiting females which are surveying prospective partners with which to mate. A lek can also indicate an avail ...
.
There are seven distinct male
courtship display
A courtship display is a set of display behaviors in which an animal, usually a male, attempts to attract a mate; the mate exercises choice, so sexual selection acts on the display. These behaviors often include ritualized movement ("dances"), ...
s that have been documented: perch-hopping, pivoting, inverted tail-fanning, nape-pecking, post-copulatory tumbling, upright sleeked posturing and branch-sidling.
Of the male behaviors, perch-hopping is the most broadly distributed among all species but ''
A. nigra.'' In all of them, the displaying bird moves quickly between multiple branches by hopping or making short flight-hops. In ''A. rothschildi,'' hopping between perches sometimes includes chasing females (or female plumaged individuals). It is unclear if chasing is a component of perch-hopping in the other species.
![Ribbon-tailed Astrapia - Papua New Guinea (19981314929)](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/Ribbon-tailed_Astrapia_-_Papua_New_Guinea_%2819981314929%29.jpg)
A type of pivot display is known from two species, ''
A. rothschildi'' and ''
A. mayeri''. In both, it involves repeatedly moving in a ritualized fashion from side-to-side with feet more-or-less in a fixed position. The most distinctive feature of the ''
A. rothschildi'' pivot is wing flicking whereas in ''
A. mayeri,'' the most distinctive features are the very ritualized hunchbacked posture and the highly exaggerated swishing movement of the male's long ribbon-like tail.
The
Arfak astrapia and the
Huon astrapia have a distinctive and specialized display behavior, which is called the inverted tail-fan display. When the abdominal feathers are sky-oriented during the display, their green iridescent feathers (that would appear otherwise dark) become highly visible; the
splendid astrapia also has highly iridescent green abdominal plumage, which raises the question about if it too has an undocumented inverted display behavior.
References
Bird genera
Endemic fauna of New Guinea
Taxa named by Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot
{{Paradisaeidae-stub