Owlet-nightjars Temporal range: Early Miocene to present | |
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Barred owlet-nightjar (Aegotheles bennettii) | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Aves |
Clade: | Strisores |
Clade: | Daedalornithes |
Order: | Aegotheliformes Worthy et al., 2007 |
Family: | Aegothelidae Bonaparte, 1853 |
Genus: | Aegotheles Vigors & Horsfield, 1827 |
Type species | |
Caprimulgus novaehollandiae [1] Latham, 1790 | |
Synonyms | |
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Owlet-nightjars are small crepuscular birds related to the nightjars and frogmouths. Most are native to New Guinea, but some species extend to Australia, the Moluccas, and New Caledonia. A flightless species from New Zealand is extinct. There is a single monotypic family Aegothelidae with the genus Aegotheles.
Owlet-nightjars are insectivores which hunt mostly in the air but sometimes on the ground; their soft plumage is a cryptic mixture of browns and paler shades, they have fairly small, weak feet (but larger and stronger than those of a frogmouth or a nightjar), a tiny bill that opens extraordinarily wide, surrounded by prominent whiskers. The wings are short, with 10 primaries and about 11 secondaries; the tail long and rounded.
A comprehensive 2003 study analyzing mtDNA sequences of Cytochrome b and ATPase subunit 8 suggests that 12 living species of owlet-nightjar should be recognized, as well as another that became extinct early in the second millennium AD. [2]
The relationship between the owlet-nightjars and the (traditional) Caprimulgiformes has long been controversial and obscure and remains so today: in the 19th century they were regarded as a subfamily of the frogmouths, and they are still generally considered to be related to the frogmouths and/or the nightjars. It appears though that they are not as closely related to either as previously thought, and that the owlet-nightjars share a more recent common ancestor with the Apodiformes. [3] As has been suggested on occasion since morphological studies of the cranium in the 1960s, [4] they are thus considered a distinct order, Aegotheliformes. This, the caprimulgiform lineage(s), and the Apodiformes, are postulated to form a clade called Cypselomorphae, with the owlet-nightjars and the Apodiformes forming the clade Daedalornithes.
In form and habits, however, they are very similar to both caprimulgiform group – or, at first glance, to small owls with huge eyes. The ancestors of the swifts and hummingbirds, two groups of birds which are morphologically very specialized, seem to have looked very similar to a small owlet-nightjar, possessing strong legs and a wide gape, while the legs and feet are very reduced in today's swifts and hummingbirds, and the bill is narrow in the latter.
Owlet-nightjars are an exclusively Australasian group, but close relatives apparently thrived all over Eurasia in the late Paleogene.
Phylogeny of the Aegothelidae [2] |
Family Aegothelidae [5]
A fossil proximal right tarsometatarsus (MNZ S42800) was found at the Bannockburn Formation of the Manuherikia Group near the Manuherikia River in Otago, New Zealand. Dating from the Early to Middle Miocene (Altonian, 19-16 million years ago), it seems to represent an owlet-nightjar ancestral to A. novaezealandiae. [6] In 2022, an additional specimen from the same locality was described by Worthy et al. as a new extinct species of Aeotheles, A. zealandivetus. The holotype specimen is NMNZ S.52917, a distal right tarsometatarsus. [7]
Nightjars are medium-sized nocturnal or crepuscular birds in the family Caprimulgidae and order Caprimulgiformes, characterised by long wings, short legs, and very short bills. They are sometimes called bugeaters, their primary source of food being insects. Some New World species are called nighthawks. The English word nightjar originally referred to the European nightjar.
The Sibley–Ahlquist taxonomy is a bird taxonomy proposed by Charles Sibley and Jon E. Ahlquist. It is based on DNA–DNA hybridization studies conducted in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.
The Apodiformes is an order, or taxonomic grouping, of birds which traditionally contained three living families—the Apodidae (swifts), the Hemiprocnidae (treeswifts), and the Trochilidae (hummingbirds); however, in the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, this order is elevated to the superorder Apodimorphae, in which hummingbirds are separated into a new order, the Trochiliformes. With nearly 450 species identified to date, it is the most diverse order of birds after the Passeriformes.
The frogmouths (Podargidae) are a group of nocturnal birds related to owlet-nightjars, swifts, and hummingbirds. Species in the group are distributed in the Indomalayan and Australasian realms.
St Bathans, formerly named Dunstan Creek, is a former gold and coal mining town in Central Otago, New Zealand. The settlement was a centre of the Otago gold rush, but mining has since long ceased. It is now largely a holiday retreat due to the preservation of many of its historic buildings.
The adzebills, genus Aptornis, were two closely related bird species, the North Island adzebill,, and the South Island adzebill,, of the extinct family Aptornithidae. The family was endemic to New Zealand. A tentative fossil species,, is known from the Miocene Saint Bathans fauna.
The New Caledonian owlet-nightjar, also known as the enigmatic owlet-nightjar, is a large owlet-nightjar with vermiculated grey-brown and black plumage. It has a long, slightly rounded tail, short, rounded wings, and long, stout legs. Its voice is unknown, but other owlet-nightjar species make churring and whistling sounds. It is the second-largest known owlet-nightjar, much larger than the Australian owlet-nightjar.
The New Zealand owlet-nightjar is an extinct, comparatively large species of owlet-nightjar formerly endemic to the islands of New Zealand. Fossil remains indicate the species was once widespread across both the North Island and the South Island.
Collocalia is a genus of swifts, containing some of the smaller species termed "swiftlets". Formerly a catch-all genus for these, a number of its former members are now normally placed in Aerodramus.
The barred owlet-nightjar is a species of bird in the owlet-nightjar family Aegothelidae. It is found in New Guinea. The species was originally thought to be the same species as the Australian owlet-nightjar, until that species was found within the range of the barred owlet-nightjar. It was also considered to be the same species as the Vogelkop owlet-nightjar. There are three subspecies, the nominate, from south-eastern New Guinea, A. b. wiedenfeldi from northern New Guinea, and A. b. plumifer from the D’Entrecasteaux Islands.
Apodimorphae is a clade of strisorean birds that include the extant families Trochilidae (hummingbirds), Hemiprocnidae (treeswifts), Apodidae (swifts), and Aegothelidae (owlet-nightjars), as well as many fossil families. This grouping of birds has been supported in a variety of recent studies. There are two higher classification schemes that have been proposed for the apodimorph families. One is all strisorean birds are classified in the order Caprimulgiformes, while the other is the strisorean birds are split into several distinct orders. In this case Apodimorphae is a subclade of Strisores that includes the orders Aegotheliformes and the Apodiformes. A similar name for the group Daedalornithes has been used for the owlet-night-apodiform clade, there is a difference between the two names with Apodimorphae defined as the total-group and Daedalornithes defined as the crown group.
Strisores, sometimes called nightbirds, is a clade of birds that includes the living families and orders Caprimulgidae, Nyctibiidae (potoos), Steatornithidae (oilbirds), Podargidae (frogmouths), Apodiformes, as well as the Aegotheliformes (owlet-nightjars) whose distinctness was only recently realized. The Apodiformes and the Aegotheliformes form the Daedalornithes.
Manuherikia is a genus of extinct species of ducks from the Miocene of New Zealand. It was described from fossil material of the Saint Bathans Fauna, in the lower Bannockburn Formation of the Manuherikia Group, found by the Manuherikia River in the Central Otago region of the South Island. The genus name comes from the name of the geological formation in which the fossils were found and, ultimately, from the Manuherikia River and its valley.
Miotadorna is a genus of extinct tadornine ducks from the Miocene of New Zealand. It contains two species, M. sanctibathansi, and M. catrionae.
Pikaihao bartlei, also referred to as Bartle's bittern or the Saint Bathans bittern, is a genus and species of prehistoric small bittern from the Early Miocene of New Zealand. It was described in 2013 from fossil material found in the Saint Bathans Fauna of the Bannockburn Formation, at Home Hills Station in the Manuherikia River valley of Otago, South Island. It was a contemporary of the much larger Saint Bathans heron, remains of which have been found in the same sediments. The genus name Pikaihao comes from the Māori pi and kaihao (“fisherman”). The specific epithet honours Sandy Bartle, Curator of Birds at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa from 1976 to 2009.
The Manuherikia Group is a fluvial-lacustrine sedimentary fill in the Central Otago area of New Zealand, at the site of the prehistoric Lake Manuherikia. The area consists of a valley and ridge topography, with a series of schist-greywacke mountains at roughly ninety degrees to each other. The Manuherika Group occurs in the current basins, and occasionally on the mountains themselves.
Vanescaves is a probable clade of strisorean birds that include the clades Steatornithiformes, Nyctibiiformes, Podargiformes (frogmouths), and Apodimorphae. Some molecular studies do support the grouping of these birds, others offer conflicting positions of the non-apodimorphaean strisoreans. In 2019 the authors Chen et al. performed a combined analysis using 2289 ultra-conserved elements [UCEs], 117 morphological characters from extant and fossil taxa found support in this clade. The authors then proposed to name this group, which its meaning is Latin for "vanish birds" in reference to the disparate nature of their geographic distribution, as well as to the poem "A Route of Evanescence" by the American poet Emily Dickinson which features a hummingbird as the main subject. In 2020 Chen & Field named the two major subclades of this group, with Sedentaves and Letornithes for their crown-groups.
The Karimui owlet-nightjar is a species of bird in the owlet-nightjar family Aegothelidae. It is found in montane eastern New Guinea.