''Coturnix'' is a

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of five extant

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

and five to eight known extinct species of Old World

quail Quail is a collective name for several genera of mid-sized birds generally placed in the order Galliformes. The collective noun for a group of quail is a flock, covey, or bevy. Old World quail are placed in the family Phasianidae, and New ...

Range

These species are distributed throughout

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

Eurasia Eurasia ( , ) is a continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. According to some geographers, Physical geography, physiographically, Eurasia is a single supercontinent. The concept of Europe and Asia as distinct continents d ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, and formerly

New Zealand New Zealand () is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and List of islands of New Zealand, over 600 smaller islands. It is the List of isla ...

. An extinct

radiation In physics, radiation is the emission or transmission of energy in the form of waves or particles through space or a material medium. This includes: * ''electromagnetic radiation'' consisting of photons, such as radio waves, microwaves, infr ...

flightless Flightless birds are birds that cannot fly, as they have, through evolution, lost the ability to. There are over 60 extant species, including the well-known ratites ( ostriches, emus, cassowaries, rheas, and kiwis) and penguins. The smal ...

, insular species is known through fossil remains from

Macaronesia Macaronesia (; ) is a collection of four volcanic archipelagos in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlantic, North Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of North Africa and Europe. Each archipelago is made up of a number of list of islands in the Atlantic Oc ...

, which were likely wiped out by human arrival.

Habits

Quail of ''Coturnix'' live in pairs or small social groups and form larger groups during migration. Not all species migrate, but most are capable of extremely rapid, upward flight to escape from danger. Unlike related genera, Old World quail do not perch in trees. They devote much of their time to scratching and foraging for seeds and invertebrates on the ground. Typical habitats are dense vegetation such as grasslands, bushes alongside rivers and cereal fields. They are heavily predated upon by diurnal hawks.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Coturnix'' was introduced in 1764 by the French naturalist

François Alexandre Pierre de Garsault François Alexandre Pierre de Garsault was a French people, French botanist, zoologist and painter. de Garsault was born on 16 April 1691 in Aix-en-Provence, France and died 3 August 1778 in Paris, France. de Garsault was a member of the French ...

. The

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, 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 spe ...

is the

common quail The common quail (''Coturnix coturnix''), or European quail, is a small ground-nesting game bird in the pheasant family Phasianidae. It is mainly migratory, breeding in the western Palearctic and wintering in Africa and southern India. With its ...

(''Coturnix coturnix''). The genus name is the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

for the

. The genus contains six species, of which one, the New Zealand quail (''Coturnix novaezelandiae''), is now extinct but was described from a living specimen. The

brown quail The brown quail (''Synoicus ypsilophorus''), also known as the swamp quail, silver quail and Tasmanian quail, is an Australasian true quail of the family Phasianidae. It is a small, ground-dwelling bird and is native to mainland Australia, Tasman ...

(''S. ypsilophora''), king quail (''S. chinensis'') and

blue quail The blue quail or African blue quail (''Synoicus adansonii'') is a species of bird in the family Phasianidae found in sub-Saharan Africa. Taxonomy The blue quail was described as ''Coturnix adansonii'' by Jules Verreaux and Édouard Verreaux in ...

(''S. adansonii''), were formerly classified in this genus, but were later reclassified into ''

Synoicus ''Synoicus'' is a genus of 4 species of Old World quail. The species in the genus are distributed throughout sub-Saharan Africa, tropical Asia, and Australasia. Two of the four species in the genus were originally classified in ''Excalfactoria'' ...

''. The quails are related to the African spurfowl,

jungle bush quail The jungle bush quail (''Perdicula asiatica'') is a species of quail in the family Phasianidae. It is native to the Indian subcontinent, where it is found in peninsular India and Sri Lanka. It has also been reported from Nepal but has not been se ...

snowcock The snowcocks or snowfowl are a group of bird species in the genus ''Tetraogallus'' of the pheasant family, Phasianidae. They are ground-nesting birds that breed in the mountain ranges of southern Eurasia from the Caucasus to the Himalayas and we ...

s and rock partridges, which together with the species of ''Coturnix'', ''

'', and a few others make up a

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

called

Coturnicini Coturnicini is a tribe of birds in the subfamily Phasianinae. It contains the Old World quail, Snowcock, snowcocks, and African spurfowl, among others. Members of this tribe have a wide range throughout Africa, Eurasia, and Australasia. This trib ...

, a

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide use of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. The definition is contested, in part due to conflict ...

within the subfamily

Pavoninae The Phasianinae ( Horsfield, 1821) are a subfamily of the pheasant family (Phasianidae) of landfowl, the order Galliformes. The subfamily includes true pheasants, tragopans, grouse, turkey and similar birds. Although this subfamily was c ...

Species

Fragmentary remains representing three other ''Coturnix'' species were also recovered from Macaronesia: ''Coturnix'' sp. A from

Bugio Island Bugio Island () — is one of the three islands of the Portuguese Desertas Islands archipelago, a small chain of islands in the Madeira, Madeira Islands Archipelago of Macaronesia. It is located in the Atlantic Ocean off the western coast of Nor ...

Madeira Madeira ( ; ), officially the Autonomous Region of Madeira (), is an autonomous Regions of Portugal, autonomous region of Portugal. It is an archipelago situated in the North Atlantic Ocean, in the region of Macaronesia, just under north of ...

, ''Coturnix'' sp. B from Santa Maria in the

Azores The Azores ( , , ; , ), officially the Autonomous Region of the Azores (), is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal (along with Madeira). It is an archipelago composed of nine volcanic islands in the Macaronesia region of the North Atl ...

(likely representing another extinct island endemic species) and ''Coturnix'' sp. C from

Graciosa Graciosa Island () (literally "graceful" or "enchanting" in Portuguese), also referred to as the ''White Island'', is a volcanic island in the Atlantic Ocean. It is the northernmost of the Central Group of islands in the Azores archipelago. The o ...

in the Azores. Due to their fragmentary nature, it is uncertain whether these represented their own species or were synonymous with one of the already-described extinct ''Coturnix'' species or the extant

(''Coturnix coturnix''), which also has fossil remains known from Macaronesia and is still present there. A

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

species from the Late

Oligocene The Oligocene ( ) is a geologic epoch (geology), epoch of the Paleogene Geologic time scale, Period that extends from about 33.9 million to 23 million years before the present ( to ). As with other older geologic periods, the rock beds that defin ...

- Late

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first epoch (geology), geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and mea ...

of SW and Central Europe was described as ''Coturnix gallica''. Another, ''C. donnezani'', was widespread in

Early Pliocene Early may refer to: Places in the United States * Early, Iowa, a city * Early, Texas, a city * Early Branch, a stream in Missouri * Early County, Georgia * Fort Early, Georgia, an early 19th century fort Music * Early B, stage name of Jamaican d ...

Early Pleistocene The Early Pleistocene is an unofficial epoch (geology), sub-epoch in the international geologic timescale in chronostratigraphy, representing the earliest division of the Pleistocene Epoch within the ongoing Quaternary Period. It is currently esti ...

Europe.Mlíkovský (2002)

Footnotes

References

* Mlíkovský, Jirí (2002a): Early Pleistocene birds of Stránská skála, Czech Republic: 2. Absolon's cave. ''Sylvia'' 38: 19-28 nglish with Czech abstractbr>PDF fulltext
* The genetic link between the Chinese bamboo partridge (''Bambusicola thoracica'') and the chicken and junglefowls of the genus ''Gallus''. A. Fumihito, T. Miyake, M. Takada, S. Ohno, and N. KondoYamashina, Institute for Ornithology, Chiba Prefecture, Japan. * Phylogenetic analysis of gallinaceous birds inferred from mitochondrial NADH dehydrogenase subunit 5 gene sequences Wee Hui Kit Publisher: 2002. * A Molecular Phylogeny of the Pheasants and Partridges Suggests That These Lineages Are Not Monophyletic R. T. Kimball,* E. L. Braun,*,† P. W. Zwartjes,* T. M. Crowe,‡,§ and J. D. Ligon*

External links

{{Authority control Bird genera Taxa named by François Alexandre Pierre de Garsault