1.
Perdix
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Perdix is a genus of Galliform gamebirds known collectively as the true partridges. The genus name is the Latin for partridge, and is derived from Ancient Greek perdix. These birds are unrelated to the species that have been named after the partridge due to similar size. There are representatives of Perdix in most of temperate Europe and Asia, one member of the genus, the grey partridge, has been introduced to the United States and Canada for the purpose of hunting. The nest is a scrape in or near cover. They feed on a variety of seeds and some insect food. These are medium-sized partridges with dull-coloured bills and legs, streaked brown upperparts, neither sex has spurs on the legs, and the only plumage distinction is that females tend to be duller in appearance. Grey and Daurian partridges are very closely related and similar in appearance, Tibetan partridge has a striking black and white face pattern, black breast barring and 16 tail feathers instead of the 18 of the other species. None of the species is threatened on a scale. The grey partridge has been affected by agricultural changes. The Tibetan partridge seems secure in its extensive and often inaccessible range on the Tibetan plateau, the bird shares its name with the nephew of Daedalus of Greek mythology, who was transformed into the bird when his uncle murdered him in jealousy. He was killed when thrown headlong down from the hill of Minerva, so, mindful of his fall. Perdix is the given to Autonomous Drones, designed/developed for military use. Developed by 20-30 somethings at MIT Lincoln Labs, grey partridge, Perdix perdix Daurian partridge, Perdix dauurica Tibetan partridge, Perdix hodgsoniae A prehistoric species only known from fossils was described as Perdix palaeoperdix. Occurring all over southern Europe during the Early–Late Pleistocene, it was a food of the Cro-Magnons. Madge, Steve, McGowan, Philip J. K. & Kirwan, Guy M. Pheasants, partidges and grouse, a guide to the pheasants, partridges, quails, grouse, guineafowl, buttonquails and sandgrouse of the world
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Crested partridge
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It is the only member of the genus Rollulus. This small partridge is a resident breeder in lowland rainforests in south Burma, south Thailand, Malaysia, Sumatra and its nest is a ground scrape lined with leaves, which is concealed under a heap of leaf litter. Five or six eggs are incubated for 18 days. Unusually for a species, the young are fed bill-to-bill by both parents instead of pecking from the ground, and although precocial, they roost in the nest while small. Crested partridge is a rotund short-tailed bird,25 cm in length, with the male marginally larger than the female, both sexes have a scarlet patch of bare skin around the eye and red legs without a spur or hind toe. The male is green above with glossy dark blue underparts. The head is adorned with a red crest, a white forehead spot. The female has pea-green body plumage apart from the wing coverts. She has a head with the bristles but no spot or crest. Young birds are duller versions of the adult of the same sex, the song is a mournful whistled si-ul. The crested partridge is usually seen singly or in pairs as it uses its feet to probe the forest floor for fruit, seeds, when disturbed, it prefers to run but if necessary it flies a short distance on its rounded wings. There is some concern about the effect of habitat destruction on this bird, however, it seems to be somewhat more adaptable than other southeast Asian pheasants. The crested wood partridge is evaluated as Near Threatened on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species and it is listed on Appendix III of CITES. Pheasants, Partridges and Grouse by Madge and McGowan, ISBN 0-7136-3966-0 ARKive - images and movies of the Crested Wood Partridge BirdLife Species Factsheet Red Data Book
3.
Taxonomy (biology)
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Taxonomy is the science of defining groups of biological organisms on the basis of shared characteristics and giving names to those groups. The exact definition of taxonomy varies from source to source, but the core of the remains, the conception, naming. There is some disagreement as to whether biological nomenclature is considered a part of taxonomy, the broadest meaning of taxonomy is used here. The word taxonomy was introduced in 1813 by Candolle, in his Théorie élémentaire de la botanique, the term alpha taxonomy is primarily used today to refer to the discipline of finding, describing, and naming taxa, particularly species. In earlier literature, the term had a different meaning, referring to morphological taxonomy, ideals can, it may be said, never be completely realized. They have, however, a value of acting as permanent stimulants. Some of us please ourselves by thinking we are now groping in a beta taxonomy, turrill thus explicitly excludes from alpha taxonomy various areas of study that he includes within taxonomy as a whole, such as ecology, physiology, genetics, and cytology. He further excludes phylogenetic reconstruction from alpha taxonomy, thus, Ernst Mayr in 1968 defined beta taxonomy as the classification of ranks higher than species. This activity is what the term denotes, it is also referred to as beta taxonomy. How species should be defined in a group of organisms gives rise to practical and theoretical problems that are referred to as the species problem. The scientific work of deciding how to define species has been called microtaxonomy, by extension, macrotaxonomy is the study of groups at higher taxonomic ranks, from subgenus and above only, than species. While some descriptions of taxonomic history attempt to date taxonomy to ancient civilizations, earlier works were primarily descriptive, and focused on plants that were useful in agriculture or medicine. There are a number of stages in scientific thinking. Early taxonomy was based on criteria, the so-called artificial systems. Later came systems based on a complete consideration of the characteristics of taxa, referred to as natural systems, such as those of de Jussieu, de Candolle and Bentham. The publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species led to new ways of thinking about classification based on evolutionary relationships and this was the concept of phyletic systems, from 1883 onwards. This approach was typified by those of Eichler and Engler, the advent of molecular genetics and statistical methodology allowed the creation of the modern era of phylogenetic systems based on cladistics, rather than morphology alone. Taxonomy has been called the worlds oldest profession, and naming and classifying our surroundings has likely been taking place as long as mankind has been able to communicate
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Animal
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Animals are multicellular, eukaryotic organisms of the kingdom Animalia. The animal kingdom emerged as a clade within Apoikozoa as the group to the choanoflagellates. Animals are motile, meaning they can move spontaneously and independently at some point in their lives and their body plan eventually becomes fixed as they develop, although some undergo a process of metamorphosis later in their lives. All animals are heterotrophs, they must ingest other organisms or their products for sustenance, most known animal phyla appeared in the fossil record as marine species during the Cambrian explosion, about 542 million years ago. Animals can be divided broadly into vertebrates and invertebrates, vertebrates have a backbone or spine, and amount to less than five percent of all described animal species. They include fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals, the remaining animals are the invertebrates, which lack a backbone. These include molluscs, arthropods, annelids, nematodes, flatworms, cnidarians, ctenophores, the study of animals is called zoology. The word animal comes from the Latin animalis, meaning having breath, the biological definition of the word refers to all members of the kingdom Animalia, encompassing creatures as diverse as sponges, jellyfish, insects, and humans. Aristotle divided the world between animals and plants, and this was followed by Carl Linnaeus, in the first hierarchical classification. In Linnaeuss original scheme, the animals were one of three kingdoms, divided into the classes of Vermes, Insecta, Pisces, Amphibia, Aves, and Mammalia. Since then the last four have all been subsumed into a single phylum, in 1874, Ernst Haeckel divided the animal kingdom into two subkingdoms, Metazoa and Protozoa. The protozoa were later moved to the kingdom Protista, leaving only the metazoa, thus Metazoa is now considered a synonym of Animalia. Animals have several characteristics that set apart from other living things. Animals are eukaryotic and multicellular, which separates them from bacteria and they are heterotrophic, generally digesting food in an internal chamber, which separates them from plants and algae. They are also distinguished from plants, algae, and fungi by lacking cell walls. All animals are motile, if only at life stages. In most animals, embryos pass through a stage, which is a characteristic exclusive to animals. With a few exceptions, most notably the sponges and Placozoa and these include muscles, which are able to contract and control locomotion, and nerve tissues, which send and process signals
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Chordate
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Chordates are deuterostomes, as during the embryo development stage the anus forms before the mouth. They are also bilaterally symmetric coelomates, in the case of vertebrate chordates, the notochord is usually replaced by a vertebral column during development, and they may have body plans organized via segmentation. There are also additional extinct taxa, the Vertebrata are sometimes considered as a subgroup of the clade Craniata, consisting of chordates with a skull, the Craniata and Tunicata compose the clade Olfactores. Of the more than 65,000 living species of chordates, the worlds largest and fastest animals, the blue whale and peregrine falcon respectively, are chordates, as are humans. Fossil chordates are known from at least as early as the Cambrian explosion, Hemichordata, which includes the acorn worms, has been presented as a fourth chordate subphylum, but it now is usually treated as a separate phylum. The Hemichordata, along with the Echinodermata, form the Ambulacraria, the Chordata and Ambulacraria form the superphylum Deuterostomia, composed of the deuterostomes. Attempts to work out the relationships of the chordates have produced several hypotheses. All of the earliest chordate fossils have found in the Early Cambrian Chengjiang fauna. Because the fossil record of early chordates is poor, only molecular phylogenetics offers a prospect of dating their emergence. However, the use of molecular phylogenetics for dating evolutionary transitions is controversial and it has also proved difficult to produce a detailed classification within the living chordates. Attempts to produce family trees shows that many of the traditional classes are paraphyletic. While this has been known since the 19th century, an insistence on only monophyletic taxa has resulted in vertebrate classification being in a state of flux. Although the name Chordata is attributed to William Bateson, it was already in prevalent use by 1880, ernst Haeckel described a taxon comprising tunicates, cephalochordates, and vertebrates in 1866. Though he used the German vernacular form, it is allowed under the ICZN code because of its subsequent latinization, among the vertebrate sub-group of chordates the notochord develops into the spine, and in wholly aquatic species this helps the animal to swim by flexing its tail. In fish and other vertebrates, this develops into the spinal cord, the pharynx is the part of the throat immediately behind the mouth. In fish, the slits are modified to form gills, a muscular tail that extends backwards behind the anus. This is a groove in the wall of the pharynx. In filter-feeding species it produces mucus to gather food particles, which helps in transporting food to the esophagus and it also stores iodine, and may be a precursor of the vertebrate thyroid gland
6.
Bird
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Birds, a subgroup of Reptiles, are the last living examples of Dinosaurs. Birds live worldwide and range in size from the 5 cm bee hummingbird to the 2.75 m ostrich. They rank as the class of tetrapods with the most living species, at ten thousand. Birds are the closest living relatives of crocodilians, the fossil record indicates that birds evolved from feathered ancestors within the theropod group of saurischian dinosaurs. True birds first appeared during the Cretaceous period, around 100 million years ago, Birds, especially those in the southern continents, survived this event and then migrated to other parts of the world while diversifying during periods of global cooling. Primitive bird-like dinosaurs that lie outside class Aves proper, in the broader group Avialae, have been found dating back to the mid-Jurassic period, around 170 million years ago. Birds have wings which are more or less developed depending on the species, the digestive and respiratory systems of birds are also uniquely adapted for flight. Some bird species of aquatic environments, particularly seabirds and some waterbirds, have evolved for swimming. Many species annually migrate great distances, Birds are social, communicating with visual signals, calls, and bird songs, and participating in such social behaviours as cooperative breeding and hunting, flocking, and mobbing of predators. The vast majority of species are socially monogamous, usually for one breeding season at a time, sometimes for years. Other species have breeding systems that are polygynous or, rarely, Birds produce offspring by laying eggs which are fertilised through sexual reproduction. They are usually laid in a nest and incubated by the parents, most birds have an extended period of parental care after hatching. Some birds, such as hens, lay eggs even when not fertilised, songbirds, parrots, and other species are popular as pets. Guano is harvested for use as a fertiliser, Birds prominently figure throughout human culture. About 120–130 species have become extinct due to human activity since the 17th century, human activity threatens about 1,200 bird species with extinction, though efforts are underway to protect them. Recreational birdwatching is an important part of the ecotourism industry, the first classification of birds was developed by Francis Willughby and John Ray in their 1676 volume Ornithologiae. Carl Linnaeus modified that work in 1758 to devise the taxonomic classification system currently in use, Birds are categorised as the biological class Aves in Linnaean taxonomy. Phylogenetic taxonomy places Aves in the dinosaur clade Theropoda, Aves and a sister group, the clade Crocodilia, contain the only living representatives of the reptile clade Archosauria
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Galliformes
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The name derives from gallus, Latin for cock or rooster. Common names are gamefowl or gamebirds, landfowl, gallinaceous birds, wildfowl or just fowl are also often used for the Galliformes, but usually these terms also refer to waterfowl, and occasionally to other commonly hunted birds. This group has about 290 species, one or more of which are found in every part of the worlds continents. They are rarer on islands, and in contrast to the closely related waterfowl, are absent from oceanic islands—unless introduced there by humans. Several species have been domesticated during their long and extensive relationships with humans and this order contains five families, Phasianidae, Odontophoridae, Numididae, Cracidae, and Megapodiidae. They are important as seed dispersers and predators in the ecosystems they inhabit, many gallinaceous species are skilled runners and escape predators by running rather than flying. Males of most species are more colorful than the females, males often have elaborate courtship behaviors that include strutting, fluffing of tail or head feathers, and vocal sounds. The living Galliformes were once divided into seven or more families, despite their distinctive appearance, grouse and turkeys probably do not warrant separation as families due to their recent origin from partridge- or pheasant-like birds. The turkeys became larger after their ancestors colonized temperate and subtropical North America, the ancestors of grouse, though, adapted to harsh climates and could thereby colonize subarctic regions. Consequently, the Phasianidae are expanded in current taxonomy to include the former Tetraonidae and Meleagrididae as subfamilies, the Anseriformes and the Galliformes together make up the Galloanserae. They are basal among the living birds, and normally follow the Paleognathae in modern bird classification systems. This was first proposed in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy and has been the one major change of that proposed scheme that was almost universally adopted. However, the Galliformes as they were traditionally delimited are called Gallomorphae in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy and this is not a natural group, however, but rather an erroneous result of the now-obsolete phenetic methodology employed in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy. Phenetic studies do not distinguish between plesiomorphic and apomorphic characters, which leads to basal lineages appearing as monophyletic groups, historically, the buttonquails, mesites and the hoatzin were placed in the Galliformes, too. The former are now known to be adapted to an inland lifestyle, whereas the mesites are probably closely related to pigeons. The relationships of the hoatzin are entirely obscure, and it is treated as a monotypic order Opisthocomiformes to signify this. The earliest galliform-like fossils hail from the Late Cretaceous, most notably those of Austinornis lentus and its partial left tarsometatarsus was found in the Austin Chalk near Fort McKinney, Texas, dating to about 85 million years ago. This bird was quite closely related to Galliformes, but whether it was a part of these or belongs elsewhere in the little-known galliform branch of Galloanserae is not clear
8.
Phasianidae
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The Phasianidae are a family of heavy, groundliving birds which includes pheasants, partridges, junglefowl, chickens, Old World quail, and peafowl. The family includes many of the most popular gamebirds, the family is a large one, and is occasionally broken up into two subfamilies, the Phasianinae, and the Perdicinae. Sometimes, additional families and birds are treated as part of this family, for example, the American Ornithologists Union includes Tetraonidae, Numididae, and Meleagrididae as subfamilies in Phasianidae. They range in weight from 43 g in the case of the quail to 6 kg in the case of the Indian peafowl. If turkeys are included, rather than classified as a separate family, then the considerably heavier wild turkey reaches a maximum weight of more than 17 kg. Length in this family can vary from 12.5 cm in the king quail up to 300 cm in green peafowl. There is generally sexual dimorphism in size, with males tending to be larger than females and they are generally plump, with broad relatively short wings and strong legs. Many have a spur on their legs, a feature shared only with guineafowl, the bill is short and generally strong, particularly in species that dig for food. Males of the species often have brightly coloured plumage as well as facial ornaments such as wattles or crests. Phasianidae is mostly an Old World family, with a distribution that includes most of Europe and Asia, all of Africa except the driest deserts and down into much of eastern Australia, meleagridinae are native to the New World, while Tetraoninae are circumpolar. The greatest diversity of species is in Southeast Asia and Africa, the Congo peacock is specific to the African Congo. The subfamily Perdicinae has a more widespread distribution. Within their range they occupy almost every habitat except for the boreal forests. The family is generally sedentary and resident, although some quails undertake long migrations, several species in the family have been widely introduced around the world, particularly pheasants which have been introduced to Europe, Australia and the Americas, specifically for hunting purposes. Captive populations of peacocks and chickens have also escaped and become feral, most species either specialise in feeding on plant matter or are predatory, although the chicks of most species are insectivorous. In addition to the variation in diet there is an amount of variation in breeding strategies among the Phasianidae. Compared to birds in general there is a number of species that do not engage in monogamy. Nesting usually occurs on the ground, only the tragopans nest higher up in stumps of bushes, nests can vary from mounds of vegetation to slight scrapes in the ground
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