| Buttonquail | |
|---|---|
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| Black-breasted buttonquail (Turnix melanogaster) | |
Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Charadriiformes |
| Family: | Turnicidae Gray, GR, 1840 |
| Type species | |
| Tetrao gibraltaricus[1] Gmelin, 1788 | |
| Genera | |
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| Distribution of the buttonquails | |
Buttonquail orhemipodes are members of a small family ofbirds,Turnicidae, which resemble, but are not closely related to, thequails ofPhasianidae. They inhabit warmgrasslands inAsia,Africa,Europe, andAustralia. There are 18 species in two genera, with most species placed in the genusTurnix and a single species in the genusOrtyxelos.
Buttonquails are small, drab, running birds, which avoid flying. The female is the more richly colored of the sexes. While the quail-plover is thought to be monogamous,Turnix buttonquails are sequentiallypolyandrous; both sexes cooperate in building a nest in the earth, but normally only the maleincubates the eggs and tends the young, while the female may go on to mate with other males.
The genusTurnix was introduced in 1791 by French naturalist inPierre Bonnaterre.[2] The genus name is an abbreviation of the genusCoturnix.[3] Thetype species was subsequently designated as thecommon buttonquail.[4]
The buttonquail family, Turnicidae, was introduced in 1840 by the English zoologistGeorge Robert Gray.[5][6] The buttonquails were traditionally placed inGruiformes orGalliformes (the crane and pheasant orders). TheSibley-Ahlquist taxonomy elevated them to ordinal status as theTurniciformes andbasal to otherNeoaves either because their accelerated rate ofmolecular evolution exceeded the limits of sensitivity ofDNA-DNA hybridization or because the authors did not perform the appropriate pairwise comparisons or both. Morphological, DNA-DNA hybridization andsequence data indicate that turnicids correctly belong to the shorebirds (Charadriiformes).[7][8][9] They seem to be an ancient group among these, as indicated by the buttonquail-likeEarly OligocenefossilTurnipax and the collected molecular data.[9]
The buttonquails are a group of small terrestrial birds. The smallest species is thequail-plover, the only species in the genusOrtyxelos, which is 10 cm (3.9 in) in length and weighs only 20 g (0.71 oz). The buttonquails in the genusTurnix range from 12 to 23 cm (4.7–9.1 in) in length and weigh between 30 and 130 g (1.1–4.6 oz). They superficially resemble the true quails of the genusCoturnix, but differ from them in lacking a hind toe and acrop. The females of this family also possess a unique vocal organ created by an enlarged trachea and inflatable bulb in the esophagus, which they use to produce a booming call.[10]
Buttonquails are unusual in that females are seriallypolyandrous. The nest is a scape on the ground often near overhanging vegetation. The female lays a clutch of 4 or 5 eggs and then looks for a new mate. The male incubates the eggs which hatch synchronously after 12 to 15 days. The precocial chicks leave the nest soon after hatching and are cared for by the male. They can fly at two weeks of age and become independent at four weeks. For the smaller species sexual maturity is reached at three months.[10]
Family: Turnicidae
Genera ofshorebirds and their extinct allies | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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