''Alopochen'' is a genus of the

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 lightweig ...

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

Anatidae The Anatidae are the biological family of water birds that includes ducks, geese, and swans. The family has a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring on all the world's continents except Antarctica. These birds are adapted for swimming, floating ...

, part of the subfamily

Tadorninae The Tadorninae is the shelduck-sheldgoose subfamily of the Anatidae, the biological family that includes the ducks and most duck-like waterfowl such as the geese and swans. This group is largely tropical or Southern Hemisphere in distribution ...

along with the shelducks. It contains one extant species, the

Egyptian goose The Egyptian goose (''Alopochen aegyptiaca'') is a member of the duck, goose A goose (plural, : geese) is a bird of any of several waterfowl species in the family (biology), family Anatidae. This group comprises the genera ''Anser (bird), ...

(''Alopochen aegyptiaca''), and two or three species which became extinct in the last 1000 years or so. The Egyptian goose is native to mainland Africa, and the extinct species are from

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

and the

Mascarene Islands The Mascarene Islands (, ) or Mascarenes or Mascarenhas Archipelago is a group of islands in the Indian Ocean east of Madagascar consisting of the islands belonging to the Republic of Mauritius as well as the French department of Réunion. The ...

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

cytochrome ''b''

sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called ...

data suggest that the relationships of ''Alopochen'' to '' Tadorna'' need further investigation.

Species

, ''Alopochen aegyptiaca'' The extinct species of the genus are: * Malagasy shelduck or Madagascar shelduck, ''Alopochen sirabensis'' (Andrews 1897) (may be subspecies of ''A. mauritiana'') – Madagascar, prehistoric: see

Late Quaternary prehistoric birds Late Quaternary prehistoric birds are avian taxa that became extinct during the Late Quaternary – the Holocene or Late Pleistocene – and before recorded history, or more precisely, before they could be studied alive by ornit ...

* Mauritius sheldgoose, ''Alopochen mauritiana'' (Newton & Gadow 1893)–

Mauritius Mauritius ( ; french: Maurice, link=no ; mfe, label=Mauritian Creole, Moris ), officially the Republic of Mauritius, is an island nation in the Indian Ocean about off the southeast coast of the African continent, east of Madagascar. It incl ...

, late 1690s * Réunion sheldgoose or Kervazo's Egyptian goose, ''Alopochen kervazoi'' (Cowles 1994) Mourer-Chauviré et al. 1999–

Réunion Réunion (; french: La Réunion, ; previously ''Île Bourbon''; rcf, label= Reunionese Creole, La Rényon) is an island in the Indian Ocean that is an overseas department and region of France. It is located approximately east of the island ...

, ''circa'' 1690s * ''Alopochen tarabukini'' (Kuročkin & Ganea) Mlíkovský 2002 The generic name looks like Greek ἀλώπηξ + χήν = "fox-goose", referring to the colour of its back, but with a Greek language error; the linguistically correct form would have been *''Alopecchen'' or *''Alopecochen''.

References

Bird genera Bird genera with one living species Taxa named by Leonhard Stejneger {{Anseriformes-stub