| Tringa | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Common greenshank (Tringa nebularia) andcommon redshank (Tringa totanus) at Cuckmere Haven, Sussex, England | |
Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Charadriiformes |
| Family: | Scolopacidae |
| Genus: | Tringa Linnaeus,1758 |
| Type species | |
| Tringa ochropus (green sandpiper) Linnaeus, 1758 | |
| Species | |
13, see text | |
| Synonyms | |
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Tringa is agenus ofwaders, containing theshanks andtattlers. The genus nameTringa is theNeo-Latin name given to thegreen sandpiper by the Italian naturalistUlisse Aldrovandi in 1599. They are mainly freshwater birds, often with brightly coloured legs as reflected in the English names of six species, as well as thespecific names of two of these and thegreen sandpiper. They are typically associated with northern hemisphere temperate regions for breeding. Some of this group—notably the green sandpiper—nest in trees, using the old nests of other birds, usuallythrushes.
Thewillet and the tattlers have been found to belong inTringa; these genus changes were formally adopted by theAmerican Ornithologists' Union in 2006.[1]
The present genus in the old, more limited sense was even further subdivided intoTringa proper andTotanus, either assubgenera or as full genera. The availableDNA sequence data suggests however that neither of these ismonophyletic and that the latter simply lumps together a number of more or less closely relatedapomorphic species. Therefore, it seems unwarranted to recognizeTotanus even as a subgenus for the time being.[2]
ThegenusTringa was introduced in 1758 by the Swedish naturalistCarl Linnaeus in thetenth edition of hisSystema Naturae.[3] The nameTringa is theNeo-Latin name given to thegreen sandpiper by the Italian naturalistUlisse Aldrovandi in 1603 based onAncient Greektrungas, a thrush-sized, white-rumped, tail-bobbing wading bird mentioned byAristotle.[4][5] Thetype species is thegreen sandpiper (Tringa ochropus).[6]
The genus contains 13 species.[7]
| Common name | Scientific name and subspecies | Range | Size and ecology | IUCN status and estimated population |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Green sandpiper
| Tringa ochropus (Linnaeus, 1758) | southern Europe, the Indian Subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and tropical Africa. | Size: Habitat: Diet: | LC |
| Solitary sandpiper
| Tringa solitaria (Wilson, 1813) | across Alaska and Canada. wintering in Central and South America, especially in the Amazon River basin, and the Caribbean. I | Size: Habitat: Diet: | LC |
| Grey-tailed tattler
| Tringa brevipes (Vieillot, 1816) | southeast Asia to Australia. | Size: Habitat: Diet: | NT |
| Wandering tattler
| Tringa incana (Gmelin, JF, 1789) | far-eastern Russia, Alaska, portions of the California coast and northwestern Canada. | Size: Habitat: Diet: | LC |
| Spotted redshank
| Tringa erythropus (Pallas, 1764) | the Arctic across much of the Palearctic, from Lapland in the west to Chukotskaya in the east | Size: Habitat: Diet: | LC |
| Greater yellowlegs
| Tringa melanoleuca (Gmelin, JF, 1789) | Canada and Alaska.Atlantic and Pacific coasts of the United States, the Caribbean, and south to South America. | Size: Habitat: Diet: | NT |
| Common greenshank
| Tringa nebularia (Gunnerus, 1767) | northern Scotland eastwards across northern Europe and east across the Palearctic | Size: Habitat: Diet: | LC |
| Willet
| Tringa semipalmata (Gmelin, JF, 1789) Two subspecies
|  | Size: Habitat: Diet: | LC |
| Lesser yellowlegs
| Tringa flavipes (Gmelin, JF, 1789) | Gulf coast of the United States, the Caribbean, and south to South America | Size: Habitat: Diet: | VU |
| Nordmann's greenshank
| Tringa guttifer (Nordmann, 1835) | eastern Russia along the south-western and northern coasts of the Sea of Okhotsk and on Sakhalin Island. South Korea, mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan on passage, and in Bangladesh, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Peninsular Malaysia | Size: Habitat: Diet: | EN |
| Marsh sandpiper
| Tringa stagnatilis (Bechstein, 1803) | Africa and India, and some migrating to Southeast Asia and Australia. T | Size: Habitat: Diet: | LC |
| Common redshank | Tringa totanus (Linnaeus, 1758) Six subspecies
| across temperate Eurasia. | Size: Habitat: Diet: | LC |
| Wood sandpiper
| Tringa glareola Linnaeus, 1758 | subarctic wetlands, from the Scottish Highlands in the west, east across Eurasia and the Palearctic. Africa, South Asia (particularly India) and Australia. | Size: Habitat: Diet: | LC |
The shanks' and tattlers' closest relatives aresandpipers of the generaActitis andXenus. Together with these, they are related to thephalaropes, as well as theturnstones andcalidrids.[8] The largegenusTringa and the two very small genera which are most closely related form aphylogeny similar to the situation found in many other shorebird lineages such ascalidrids,snipes andwoodcocks, orgulls.
The same study[8] has indicated that somemorphological characters such as details of thefurcula andpelvis have evolvedconvergently and are no indicators of close relationship. Similarly, the leg/foot color wildly varies between close relatives, with thespotted redshank, thegreater yellowlegs, and thecommon greenshank for example being more closely related among each other than to any other species in the group; the ancestral coloration of the legs and feet was fairly certainly drab buffish as in e.g. thegreen sandpiper. On the other hand, the molecularphylogeny reveals that the general habitus and size as well as the overall plumage pattern are good indicators of an evolutionary relationship in this group.
TheNordmann's greenshank, a rare andendangered species, was not available for molecular analyses. It is fairly aberrant and was formerly placed in themonotypic genusPseudototanus. It appears closest overall to thesemipalmata-flavipes and thestagnatilis-totanus-glareola groups, though it also has some similarities to thegreater yellowlegs andcommon greenshank.
Fossil shanks are known since theMiocene, possibly even since theEo-/Oligocene some 33-30million years ago (mya) which would be far earlier than most extant genera of birds. However, it is uncertain whetherTringa edwardsi indeed belongs into the present-day genus or is a distinct, ancestral form. The time of theTringa-Actitis-Xenus-Phalaropus divergence has been tentatively dated at 22 mya, the beginning of the Miocene;[10] even if the dating is largely conjectural, it suggests thatT. edwardsi does indeed not belong into the modern genus. Molecular dating[11]—which is not too reliable, however—indicates that the diversification into the known lineages occurred between 20 and 5 mya. The fossil record contains species formerly separated inTotanus from the Early Miocene onwards. Although these are usually known from very scant remains, the fact that apparentlyapomorphicTringa as well as a putative phalarope are known from about 23-22 mya indicates that the shank-phalarope group had already diverged into the modern genera by the start of the Miocene. Thebiogeography of living and fossil species—notably, the rarity of the latter in well-researchedNorth American sites—seems to suggest thatTringa originated in Eurasia. Time and place neatly coincide with the disappearance of the last vestiges of theTurgai Sea, and this process may well have been a major factor in the separation of the genera in the shank-phalaropeclade. Still, scolopacids are very similar osteologically, and many of the early fossils of presumed shanks require revaluation.[9]
"Tringa" hoffmanni is now inLudiortyx. While its relationships are disputed, it was not a charadriiform.
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Authority control databases: National |
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