TheGruiformes are anorder containing a considerable number of living and extinctbirdfamilies, with a widespread geographical diversity. Gruiform means 'crane form'.
Traditionally, a number of wading and terrestrial bird families that did not seem to belong to any other order were classified together as Gruiformes. These include 15 species of largecranes, about 145 species of smallercrakes and rails, as well as a variety of families comprising one to threespecies, such as theHeliornithidae, thelimpkin, or thePsophiidae.Other birds have been placed in this order more out of necessity to place themsomewhere; this has caused the expanded Gruiformes to lack distinctiveapomorphies. Recent studies indicate that these "odd Gruiformes" are if at all only loosely related to the cranes, rails, and relatives ("core Gruiformes").
This section'sfactual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. The reason given is:No papers after 2009 have been cited or discussed. Papers on Neoaves phylogeny now use extensive nuclear genome sampling instead of just mitochondrial data. The Metaves-Coronaves division has fallen out of favor, and even papers recovering a similar topology no longer use these terms. Recent papers on the position of adzebills also need to be referenced. Please help update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information.(November 2025)
There are only two suprafamilial clades (natural groups) among the birds traditionally classified as Gruiformes. Rails (Rallidae), flufftails (Sarothruridae), finfoots and sungrebe (Heliornithidae), adzebills (Aptornithidae), trumpeters (Psophiidae), limpkin (Aramidae), and cranes (Gruidae) compose the suborder Grues and are termed "core-Gruiformes".[4] These are the only true Gruiformes. The suborder Eurypygae includes thekagu (Rhynochetidae) andsunbittern (Eurypygidae). These are not even remotely related to Grues. The families of mesites or roatelos (Mesitornithidae), button-quails (Turnicidae), Australian plains-wanderer (Pedionomidae), seriemas (Cariamidae), and bustards (Otididae) each represent distinct and unrelated lineages. Many families known only from fossils have been assigned to the Gruiformes, e.g., Ergilornithidae, Phorusrhacidae, Messelornithidae, Eogruidae, Idiornithidae, Bathornithidae, to name just a few (see below). Though some of these are superficially 'crane-like' and the possibility exists that some may even be related to extant families traditionally included in the Gruiformes, there are no completely extinct families that can be confidently assigned to core-Gruiformes.
The traditional order Gruiformes was established by the influential German avian comparative anatomist Max Fürbringer (1888). Over the decades, many ornithologists suggested that members of the order were in fact more closely related to other groups (reviewed by Olson 1985, Sibley and Ahlquist 1990). For example, it was thought that sunbittern might be related to herons and that seriemas might be related to cuckoos. Olson and Steadman (1981) were first to correctly disband any of the traditional Gruiformes. They recognized that the Australian plains-wanderer (family Pedionomidae) was actually a member of the shorebirds (order Charadriiformes) based on skeletal characters. This was confirmed by Sibley and Ahlquist (1990) based onDNA–DNA hybridization and subsequently by Paton et al. (2003), Paton and Baker (2006) and Fain and Houde (2004, 2006). Sibley and Ahlquist furthermore removed button-quails (Turnicidae) from the Gruiformes based on large DNA–DNA hybridization distances to other supposed Gruiformes. However, it was not until the work of Paton et al. (2004) and Fain and Houde (2004, 2006) that the correct placement of buttonquails within the shorebirds (order Charadriiformes) was documented on the basis of phylogenetic analysis of multiple genetic loci. Using 12S ribosomal DNA sequences, Houde et al. (1997) were the first to present molecular genetic evidence of gruiformpolyphyly, although apparently they were not convinced by it. However, on the basis of numerous additional sequence data, it has been shown decisively that the traditionally recognized Gruiformes consist of five to seven unrelated clades (Fain and Houde 2004, Ericson et al. 2006, Hackett et al. 2008).
Fain and Houde (2004) proposed that Neoaves are divisible into two clades, Metaves and Coronaves, although it has been suggested from the start that Metaves may be paraphyletic (Fain and Houde 2004, Ericsonet al. 2006, Hackettet al. 2008). Sunbittern, kagu, and mesites all group within Metaves but all the other lineages of "Gruiformes" group either with a collection of waterbirds or landbirds within Coronaves. This division has been upheld by the combined analysis of as many as 30 independent loci (Ericsonet al. 2006, Hackettet al. 2008), but is dependent on the inclusion of one or two specific loci in the analyses. One locus, i.e.,mitochondrial DNA, contradicts the strict monophyly of Coronaves (Morgan-Richardset al. 2008), but phylogeny reconstruction based on mitochondrial DNA is complicated by the fact that few families have been studied, the sequences are heavily saturated (with back mutations) at deep levels of divergence, and they are plagued by strong base composition bias.
Thekagu andsunbittern are one another's closest relatives. It had been proposed (Cracraft 2001) that they and the recently extinct adzebills (family Aptornithidae) from New Zealand constitute a distinctGondwanan lineage. However, sunbittern and kagu are believed to have diverged from one another long after the break-up ofGondwanaland and the adzebills are in fact members of the Grues (Houdeet al. 1997, Houde 2009). Theseriemas andbustards represent distinct lineages within neoavian waterbirds.
When considered to be monophyletic, it was assumed that Gruiformes was among the more ancient of avian lineages. The divergence of "gruiforms" among "Metaves" and "Coronaves" is proposed to be the first divergence among Neoaves, far predating theCretaceous–Paleogene extinction event c. 66mya (Houde 2009). No unequivocalbasal gruiforms are known from the fossil record. However, there are severalgenera that are not unequivocally assignable to the known families and that may occupy a more basal position:
Propelargus (Late Eocene/Early Oligocene of Quercy, France) – cariamid or idornithid
Rupelrallus (Early Oligocene of Germany) – rallid? parvigruid?
Badistornis (Brule Middle Oligocene of Shannon County, Missouri) – aramid?
Probalearica (Late Oligocene? – Middle Pliocene of Florida, France?, Moldavia and Mongolia) – gruid? Anomen dubium?
"Gruiformes" gen. et sp. indet. MNZ S42623 (Bathans Early/Middle Miocene of Otago, New Zealand) – Aptornithidae?
Aramornis (Sheep Creek Middle Miocene of Snake Creek Quarries, U.S.) – gruid? aramid?
Other even more enigmatic fossil birds and five living families are occasionally suggested to belong into this order, such as the proposedLate Cretaceous familyLaornithidae and the following taxa:
^Mourer-Chaviré C. (1995) The Messelornithidae (Aves: Gruiformes) from the Paleogene of France. - Cour. Forsch.-Inst. Senckenberg, 181: 95–105
^Mayr, Gerald (2016). Avian evolution: the fossil record of birds and its paleobiological significance. Topics in Paleobiology. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 306.ISBN978-1-119-02076-9.
Olson, S. L. (1985) "The fossil record of birds".Avian biology (D. S. Farner and King, J. R. and K. C. Parkes, eds.)8: 79–238, Academic Press, Orlando.
Olson, S. L.; Steadman, D. W. (1981). "The relationships of the Pedionomidae (Aves: Charadriformes)".Smithsonian Contributions to Zoology.337 (337):1–25.doi:10.5479/si.00810282.337.
Paton, Tara A.; Baker, Allan J. (2006). "Sequences from 14 mitochondrial genes provide a well-supported phylogeny of the Charadriiform birds congruent with the nuclear RAG-1 tree".Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.39 (3):657–667.Bibcode:2006MolPE..39..657P.doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2006.01.011.PMID16531074.
