The white-naped crane (''Antigone vipio'') is a
bird of the
crane family. It is a large bird, long, about tall, and weighing about , with pinkish legs, a grey-and-white-striped neck, and a red face patch.
Distribution
The white-naped crane breeds in northeastern
Mongolia, northeastern
China
China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...
, and adjacent areas of southeastern
Russia, where a program at
Khingan Nature Reserve raises
eggs provided from U.S.
zoos to bolster the species. Different groups of the birds migrate to winter near the
Yangtze River, the
Korean Demilitarized Zone, and on
Kyūshū
is the third-largest island of Japan's five main islands and the most southerly of the four largest islands ( i.e. excluding Okinawa). In the past, it has been known as , and . The historical regional name referred to Kyushu and its surround ...
in
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
. They are the only
cranes
Crane or cranes may refer to:
Common meanings
* Crane (bird), a large, long-necked bird
* Crane (machine), industrial machinery for lifting
** Crane (rail), a crane suited for use on railroads
People and fictional characters
* Crane (surname), ...
found in
South Korea. They also reach
Kazakhstan and
Taiwan. Only about 4,900 to 5,400 individuals remain in the wild.
Its diet consists mainly of
insects,
seeds,
roots, plants, and small animals.
Due to ongoing habitat loss and overhunting in some areas, the white-naped crane is evaluated as
vulnerable on the
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
[ It is listed on Appendix I and II of CITES.
In South Korea, it has been designated natural monument 203.
]
Taxonomy
The white-naped crane was formerly placed in the genus '' Grus'', but a molecular phylogenetic
Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...
study published in 2010 found that the genus, as then defined, was polyphyletic. In the resulting rearrangement to create 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 ...
genera, four species, including the white-naped crane, were placed in the resurrected genus '' Antigone'' that had originally been erected by 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.
Gallery
File:Grus vipio at the Bronx Zoo 006.jpg, A mated pair performing a " unison call", which strengthens the pair bond and provides a territorial warning to other cranes.
File:Grus vipio at the Bronx Zoo 009.jpg, Juvenile
File:Grus vipio -Columbus Zoo, Powell, Ohio, USA -egg-8a.jpg, Adult and egg
File:Grus vipio -Netherlands -zoo -8a.jpg, Head
References
External links
*
BirdLife Species Factsheet
White-naped Crane (''Grus vipio'')
from ''Cranes of the World'' (1983) by Paul Johnsgard
Antigone (genus)
Taxa named by Peter Simon Pallas
Birds of Manchuria
Birds described in 1811
Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN
{{Gruiformes-stub