Junglefowl

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Junglefowl
Temporal range: Late Miocene – recent
Gallus sonneratii - female (Thattekad), crop.jpg
Grey junglefowl (G. sonneratii) hen
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Galliformes
Family: Phasianidae
Tribe: Gallini
Genus: Gallus
Brisson, 1760
Type species
Phasianus gallus [1]
Linnaeus, 1758
Species
  • four species:
Gallus distribution.jpg
  Gallus gallus
  Gallus lafayettii
  Gallus sonneratii
  Gallus varius

Junglefowl are the only four living species of bird from the genus Gallus in the bird order Galliformes, and occur in parts of South and Southeast Asia. One of the species in this genus, the red junglefowl, is of historical importance as the direct ancestor of the domestic chicken, although the grey junglefowl, Sri Lankan junglefowl and green junglefowl are likely to have also been involved. [2] The Sri Lankan junglefowl is the national bird of Sri Lanka. They diverged from their common ancestor about 4–6 million years ago. [2] Although originating in Asia, remains of junglefowl bones have also been found in regions of Chile, which date back to 1321–1407 CE, providing evidence of possible Polynesian migration through the Pacific Ocean. [3]

Contents

The junglefowl are omnivorous, eating a variety of leaves, plant matter, invertebrates such as slugs and insects, and occasionally small mice and frogs. These are large birds, with colourful plumage in males, but are nevertheless difficult to see in the dense vegetation they inhabit.

As with many birds in the pheasant family, the male takes no part in the incubation of the egg or rearing of the precocial young. These duties are performed by the drab and well-camouflaged female. Females and males do not form pair bonds; instead, the species has a polygynandrous mating system in which each female will usually mate with several males. Aggressive social hierarchies exist among both females and males, from which the term "pecking order" originates.

Taxonomy

The genus Gallus was erected by the French scientist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in his Ornithologie published in 1760. [4] The type species is the red junglefowl (Gallus gallus). [5] The Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus had introduced the genus Gallus in the 6th edition of his Systema Naturae published in 1748, [6] but Linnaeus dropped the genus in the important tenth edition of 1758 and put the red junglefowl together with the common pheasant in the genus Phasianus . [7] [8] However, the red junglefowl and common pheasant are now known to have diverged about 18–23 million years ago, and belong to different subfamilies. [2] This pairwise divergence time was also the same between the other three junglefowls and the pheasant. [2] As the publication date of Linnaeus's sixth edition was before the 1758 starting point of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature, Brisson and not Linnaeus is considered as the authority for the genus. [9]

Gallus  

Green junglefowlGallus varius (Shaw, 1798)

Red junglefowlGallus gallus (Linnaeus, 1758)

Sri Lankan junglefowlGallus lafayettii (Lesson, 1831)

Grey junglefowlGallus sonneratii (Temminck, 1813)

Cladogram showing the species in the genus Gallus . [2] [10]

More recent phylogenetic evidence supports the closest relatives of Gallus being the bamboo partridges in the genus Bambusicola , from which they diverged about 15 million years ago. [11]

Extant species

The genus contains four species. [12]

Genus Gallus Brisson, 1760 – four species
Common nameScientific name and subspeciesRangeSize and ecologyIUCN status and estimated population
Red junglefowl

Red Junglefowl (male)-9858, crop.jpg
Male
Gallus gallus female - Kaeng Krachan.jpg
Female

Gallus gallus
(Linnaeus, 1758)

Five subspecies [13]
  • G. g. bankiva(Temminck, 1813)
  • G. g. gallus(Linnaeus, 1758)
  • G. g. jabouillei(Delacour & Kinnear, 1928)
  • G. g. murghi(Robinson & Kloss, 1920)
  • G. g. spadiceus(Bonnaterre, 1792)
India, Pakistan, eastwards across Indochina and southern China and into Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines and Indonesia
Gallus gallus map.jpg
Size:

Habitat:

Diet:
 LC 


Sri Lankan junglefowl

Flickr - Rainbirder - Ceylon Junglefowl (Gallus lafayetii) Male.jpg
Male
Jungle fowl.jpg
Female

Gallus lafayettii
Lesson, 1831
Sri Lanka
Gallus lfeyetii map.jpg
Size:

Habitat:

Diet:
 LC 


Grey junglefowl

Grey jungle fowl (cropped), crop.jpg
Male
Grey Junglefowl Female (38564927780).jpg
Female

Gallus sonneratii
Temminck, 1813
Indian Peninsula, but extends into Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, south Rajasthan, and Pakistani Punjab
GallusSonneratiiMap.png
Size:

Habitat:

Diet:
 LC 


Green junglefowl

Green Junglefowl - Baluran NP - East Java MG 7948 (29183361863) (cropped).jpg
Male
Stavenn Gallus varius 00.jpg
Female

Gallus varius
(Shaw, 1798)
Java, Bali, Lombok, Komodo, Flores, Rinca, and small islands linking Java with Flores, Indonesia Size:

Habitat:

Diet:
 LC 


Fossil record

Prehistorically, the genus Gallus was found all over Eurasia; in fact, it appears to have evolved in southeastern Europe. Several fossil species have been described, but their distinctness is not firmly established in all cases:

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References

  1. "Phasianidae". aviansystematics.org. The Trust for Avian Systematics. Retrieved August 5, 2023.
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Lawal, R.A.; et al. (2020). "The wild species genome ancestry of domestic chickens". BMC Biology. 18 (13): 13. doi: 10.1186/s12915-020-0738-1 . PMC   7014787 . PMID   32050971.
  3. Storey, Alice (June 2007). "Radiocarbon and DNA Evidence for a Pre-Columbian Introduction of Polynesian Chickens to Chile" (PDF). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104 (25): 10335–10339. Bibcode:2007PNAS..10410335S. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0703993104 . PMC   1965514 . PMID   17556540.
  4. Brisson, Mathurin Jacques (1760). Ornithologie, ou, Méthode contenant la division des oiseaux en ordres, sections, genres, especes & leurs variétés (in French and Latin). Vol. 1. Paris: Jean-Baptiste Bauche. Vol. 1, p. 26, Vol. 1, p. 166.
  5. Peters, James Lee, ed. (1934). Check-list of Birds of the World. Vol. 2. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 118.
  6. Linnaeus, Carl (1748). Systema Naturae sistens regna tria naturae, in classes et ordines, genera et species redacta tabulisque aeneis illustrata (in Latin) (6th ed.). Stockholmiae (Stockholm): Godofr, Kiesewetteri. pp. 16, 28.
  7. Linnaeus, Carl (1758). Systema Naturæ per regna tria naturae, secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis (in Latin). Vol. 1 (10th ed.). Holmiae (Stockholm): Laurentii Salvii. p. 158.
  8. Allen, J.A. (1910). "Collation of Brisson's genera of birds with those of Linnaeus". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. 28: 317–335. hdl:2246/678.
  9. . "Article 3". International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (4th ed.). London: International Trust for Zoological Nomenclature. 1999. ISBN   978-0-85301-006-7.
  10. Tiley, G.P.; Pandey, A.; Kimball, R.T.; Braun, E.L.; Burleigh, J.G. (2020). "Whole genome phylogeny of Gallus: introgression and data‑type effects". Avian Research. 11 (7). doi: 10.1186/s40657-020-00194-w .
  11. "Galliformes". bird-phylogeny (in German). Retrieved August 2, 2021.
  12. Gill, Frank; Donsker, David, eds. (2017). "Pheasants, partridges & francolins". World Bird List Version 7.3. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved November 22, 2017.
  13. IOC World Bird List 13.1 (Report). doi: 10.14344/ioc.ml.13.1 .
  14. 1 2 Mourer-Chauviré, Cécile (1989). "A peafowl from the Pliocene of Perpignan, France" (PDF). Palaeontology. 32 (2): 439 via The Palaeontological Association.