The dot-winged crake (''Laterallus spiloptera'') is a

Vulnerable species A vulnerable species is a species which has been Conservation status, categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as being threatened species, threatened with extinction unless the circumstances that are threatened species, ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in subfamily Rallinae of 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 rails, gallinules, and coots.HBW and BirdLife International (2021) Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world. Version 6. Available at: http://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v6_Dec21.zip retrieved August 7, 2022 It is found in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...

, and

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 July 2022. Species Lists of Birds for South American Countries and Territories. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCCountryLists.htm retrieved July 24, 2022

Taxonomy and systematics

The dot-winged crake was originally described in genus ''

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 ...

''. However,

phylogenetic analyses In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial D ...

by Garcia et al. (2014) placed it in the predominantly South American clade ''

Laterallus ''Laterallus'' is a genus of birds in the rail family Rallidae. These small, relatively short-billed terrestrial rails are found among dense vegetation near water in the Neotropics, although a single species, the black rail, also occurs in the ...

''. Stervander et al. (2019) demonstrated that it is the

sister species In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and t ...

of the world's smallest

flightless bird Flightless birds are birds that through evolution lost the ability to fly. There are over 60 extant species, including the well known ratites (ostriches, emu, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwi) and penguins. The smallest flightless bird is the In ...

, the

Inaccessible Island rail The Inaccessible Island rail (''Laterallus rogersi'') is a small bird of the rail family, Rallidae. Endemic to Inaccessible Island in the Tristan Archipelago in the isolated south Atlantic, it is the smallest extant flightless bird in the worl ...

''Laterallus rogersi'' (previously placed in the monotypic genus ''Atlantisia'') and should bear the

binomial Binomial may refer to: In mathematics *Binomial (polynomial), a polynomial with two terms * Binomial coefficient, numbers appearing in the expansions of powers of binomials *Binomial QMF, a perfect-reconstruction orthogonal wavelet decomposition ...

''Laterallus spilopterus'', which was supported by Kirchman et al. (2021). As of late 2022, the

International Ornithological Committee The International Ornithologists' Union, formerly known as the International Ornithological Committee, is a group of about 200 international ornithologists, and is responsible for the International Ornithological Congress and other international ...

(IOC) calls the dot-winged crake ''Laterallus spiloptera'',

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. T ...

calls it ''Laterallus spilopterus'', and the

Clements taxonomy ''The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World'' is a book by Jim Clements which presents a list of the bird species of the world. The most recent printed version is the sixth edition (2007), but has been updated yearly, the last version in 2022 ...

and the South American Classification Committee of the

American Ornithological Society The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its m ...

(SACC) call it ''Porzana spiloptera''.Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, S. M. Billerman, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2022. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2022. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/ retrieved November 10, 2022Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 July 2022. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved July 24, 2022 The worldwide taxonomic systems agree that the species is

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 ...

Description

The dot-winged crake is long. The sexes are alike. Their upperparts are dark olive brown with blackish streaks and some white markings on the flight feathers. Their face and breast are dark gray and their vent area and undertail

coverts A covert feather or tectrix on a bird is one of a set of feathers, called coverts (or ''tectrices''), which, as the name implies, cover other feathers. The coverts help to smooth airflow over the wings and tail. Ear coverts The ear coverts are sm ...

are barred black and white.Taylor, B., P. F. D. Boesman, and C. J. Sharpe (2020). Dot-winged Crake (''Porzana spiloptera''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.dowcra1.01 retrieved November 28, 2022

Distribution and habitat

The dot-winged crake's distribution is unsettled. The IOC and Clements place it in southern Uruguay and northern Argentina. The

Cornell Lab of Ornithology The Cornell Lab of Ornithology is a member-supported unit of Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, which studies birds and other wildlife. It is housed in the Imogene Powers Johnson Center for Birds and Biodiversity in Sapsucker Woods Sanctuar ...

's ''Birds of the World'' adds Brazil's southernmost state,

Rio Grande do Sul Rio Grande do Sul (, , ; "Great River of the South") is a Federative units of Brazil, state in the South Region, Brazil, southern region of Brazil. It is the Federative_units_of_Brazil#List, fifth-most-populous state and the List of Brazilian st ...

, and the SACC adds Chile to those three countries. Cornell's

eBird eBird is an online database of bird observations providing scientists, researchers and amateur naturalists with real-time data about bird distribution and abundance. Originally restricted to sightings from the Western Hemisphere, the project e ...

has records in all four countries. The dot-winged crake inhabits freshwater and brackish waters and some drier landscapes as well. It is found in freshwater and tidal marshes, swamps, wet meadows, grasslands, and

riparian A riparian zone or riparian area is the interface between land and a river or stream. Riparian is also the proper nomenclature for one of the terrestrial biomes of the Earth. Plant habitats and communities along the river margins and banks ar ...

scrub.

Behavior

Movement

No movements are known for the dot-winged crake.

Feeding

The dot-winged crake feeds on insects, seeds, and marsh vegetation. Its foraging technique has not been documented.

Breeding

A dot-winged crake nest was discovered near

Buenos Aires Buenos Aires ( or ; ), officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires ( es, link=no, Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires), is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South ...

but no details of it or any other aspects of the species' breeding biology are known.

Vocalization

The dot-winged crake's song is " a high note followed by a lower-pitched rattle 'kee-krrrrr'" that is repeated several times. Its calls include "a mellow soft 'pwup' and a scolding rattle."

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

originally assessed the dot-winged crake as Threatened and since 1994 as Vulnerable. Its range is small and fragmented, and its estimated population of 2500 to 10,000 mature individuals is believed to be decreasing. Conversion of wetlands to agriculture, especially grazing with accompanying burning, appears to be the main threat. Other wetlands have been flooded. It occurs in a few protected areas but " stributional surveys reurgently needed within hespecies' limited range".

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1273728 Laterallus Birds described in 1877 Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN