Sulidae
| Sulidae | |
|---|---|
| |
| Brown booby, Sula leucogaster | |
Scientific classification 
| |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Suliformes |
| Family: | Sulidae Reichenbach, 1849 |
Genera
| |
|
| |
| Synonyms | |
|
Enkurosulidae Kashin, 1977 | |
The
DNA sequence characters. Abbott's booby (Papasula) is given its own genus, as it stands apart from both in these respects. It appears to be a distinct and ancient lineage, maybe closer to the gannets than to the true boobies.[3][4]
Description
_on_Santa_Cruz,_Gal%C3%A1pagos_Islands.JPG)
Sulids measure about 60 to 85 cm (24 to 33 in) in length and have a wingspan around 140 to 175 cm (4.59 to 5.74 ft). They have long, narrow, and pointed wings, and a quite long, graduated, and rather lozenge-shaped tail whose outer feathers are shorter than the central ones. Their flight muscles are rather small to allow for the small cross-section required for plunge-diving, as an adaptive trade-off relative to some sacrifice in flight performance. Consequently, they are very streamlined, reducing drag, so their bodies are "torpedo-shaped" and somewhat flat.[5]
They have stout legs and
upper mandible curves down slightly at the tip and can be moved upward to accept large prey. To keep water out during plunges, the nostrils enter into the bill rather than opening to the outside directly. The eyes are angled forward, and provide a wider field of binocular vision than in most other birds.[5]
Their
moult their tail feathers irregularly and the flight feathers of their wings in stages, so that starting at the first moult, they always have some old feathers, some new ones, and some partly grown ones. Moult as a response to periods of stress has been recorded.[5]
Distribution and ecology
The sulids are distributed mainly in
Pacific islands suggest that they are not infrequently blown away from their home range by storms, and can wander for long distances in search of a safe place to land if need be.[5]
All
scavenge discarded bycatch and chum. The typical hunting behavior is a dive from midair, taking the bird a 1–2 m under water. If prey manages to escape the diving birds at first, they may give chase using their legs and wings for underwater swimming.[5]
As noted above, the
synapomorphies: Before taking off, they point their bills upwards (gannets) or forward (boobies). After landing again, they point downwards with their bills. In response to a threat, they do not attack, but shake their heads and point their bills towards the intruders.[3]
Reproduction
All sulids breed in
colonies. Males examine the colony area in flight and then pick a nest site, which they defend by fighting and territorial displays. Males then advertise to females by a special display and call. Their display behavior is characteristic, though not as diverse as the numerous variations found among the cormorants; it typically includes the male shaking his head. Females search the colony in flight and on foot for a mate. Once they select males, pairs maintain their bonds by preening each other and by frequent copulation.[3][5]
The
vascularized and hot, and the birds place the eggs under the webs. Eggs lost during the first half of incubation are replaced.[5]
At hatching, parents move the eggs and then the hatchlings to the tops of their webs. The young hatch naked, but soon develop white
altricial young; after two weeks, both parents leave the nest unguarded at times while they go fishing. The times for the chicks to fledge and become independent of their parents depend greatly on the food supply. Rarely does more than one chick survive to maturity, except in the Peruvian booby (Sula variegata), which has the biggest clutch (two to four eggs), and less often in the blue-footed booby (S. nebouxii). Siblicide by the stronger of two chicks is frequent.[5]
Systematics and evolution
Masillastega rectirostris
Sulids are related to a number of other
basal lineages distinct from the living Sulidae. However, the proposed family Pseudosulidae (or Enkurosulidae) is almost certainly invalid.[2][6][7][8]
| Sulid phylogeny | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Cladogram showing the family Sulidae.[9] |
The Sulae were traditionally included in the
Within the family itself, three living genera—Morus (gannets, three species)—are recognized. A 2011 study of multiple genes found Abbott's booby to be basal to all other gannets and boobies, and likely to have diverged from them around 22 million years ago, and the ancestors of the gannets and remaining boobies split around 17 million years ago. The most recent common ancestor of all boobies lived in the late Miocene around 6 million years ago, after which time the boobies steadily diverged. The gannets split more recently, only around 2.5 million years ago.[9]
| Species of boobies | ||
|---|---|---|
| Common and binomial names | Image | Range |
| Northern gannet (Morus bassanus) |
|
Western Europe and North America |
| Cape gannet (Morus capensis) |
|
West to Southwest African coast |
| Australasian gannet (Morus serrator or Sula bassana) |
|
Australia and New Zealand |
| Abbott's booby (Papasula abbotti) |
|
Christmas Island |
| Blue-footed booby (Sula nebouxii) |
|
Eastern Pacific Ocean from California to the Galápagos Islands south into Peru |
| Masked booby (Sula dactylatra) |
|
Tropical oceans between the 30th parallel north and 30th parallel south. In the Indian Ocean it ranges from the coastlines of the Arabian Peninsula and East Africa across to Sumatra and Western Australia |
| Nazca booby (Sula granti) |
|
Eastern Pacific from the islands in Baja California to the Galápagos Islands and the Isla de la Plata in Ecuador and Malpelo in Colombia |
| Brown booby (Sula leucogaster) |
|
Pantropical areas of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans |
| Red-footed booby (Sula sula) |
|
Most tropical areas of oceans, main exceptions being tropical areas of E Atlantic and SE Pacific, breeding on islands |
| Peruvian booby (Sula variegata) |
|
Coast of South America from Peru to Chile |
The
Tethys Sea – probably the latter rather than the former, given that their earliest fossils are abundant in Europe, but absent from the well-studied contemporary American deposits.[6][8]
Prehistoric sulids (or suloids) only known from fossils are:
- Masillastega (Early Eocene of Messel, Germany) – may belong in Eostega
- Eostega (Late Eocene of Cluj-Manastur, Romania) – may include Masillastega
- Sulidae gen. et sp. indet. (Thalberg Late Oligocene of Germany) – Empheresula?[11]
- Sulidae gen. et sp. indet. (Late Oligocene of South Carolina, United States) – Microsula?[12]
- Empheresula (Late Oligocene of Gannat, France – Middle Miocene of Steinheimer Becken, Germany) – including "Sula" arvernensis, "Parasula"[13]
- Microsula (Late Oligocene of South Carolina, United States – Grund Middle Miocene of Austria) – may belong in Morus or Sula, includes "Sula" avita, "S." pygmaea, Enkurosula, "Pseudosula"[1]
- Sarmatosula (Middle Miocene of Credinţa, Romania)
- Miosula (Late Miocene of California)
- Paleosula (Early Pliocene? of California)
- Rhamphastosula (Pisco Early Pliocene of SC Peru)
- Bimbisula (middle Pliocene of South Carolina)[14]
- Sulidae gen. et sp. indet. (Late Pliocene of Valle di Fine, Italy) – Morus?[15]
For prehistoric
genera
, see the genus articles.
The
seaduck genus Mergus, in Sula, and after a distinct genus was established for it, in the Phalacrocoracidae. While it is quite likely to belong in the Sulae and may have been an ancient sulid (or suloid), of the three placements explicitly proposed, none seems to be correct.[6][2][16][8]
References
- ^ Pseudosula as established by Boetticherin 1955: Mlíkovský (2002: p.67)
- ^ p.66
- ^
- DOI: 10.1642/0004-8038(2002)119[0820:MSFSSO]2.0.CO;2 PDF fulltext Archived 2016-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c d e f g h Nelson, J. Bryan (2003): Gannets and Boobies. In: Perrins, C. (ed.): The Firefly Encyclopedia of Birds: 82–87. Firefly Books, Oxford.
- ^ Olson, Storrs L. (1985): Section X.G.5.a. Sulidae. In: The Fossil Record of Birds. Avian Biology 8: 203-204. PDF fulltext
- ^ p.100
- ^
- ^ PMID 21144905.
- ^ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2012-03-01. Retrieved 2011-06-30.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link) - ^ A distal humerus fragment; larger than Microsula: Göhlich (2003), Mayr (2009: p.65)
- ^ Some fossils that "do not differ substantially from modern [sulid] genera"; no further details given: Olson (1985: p.203)
- Parasula as established by Mathewsin 1913: Mlíkovský (2002: p.66)
- ^ Benson, Richard D.; Erickson, Bruce R. (2013). "A new genus and species of booby (Sulidae: Aves) from the Pliocene of South Carolina, with a new corollary to the nature of sister taxa". Science Museum Monographs in Paleontology. 7. St. Paul, MN: Science Museum of Minnesota.
- ^ A proximal humerus fragment somewhat similar to a gannet's: Lambrecht (1933: p.286)
- ^ Göhlich, Ursula B. (2003): The avifauna of the Grund Beds (Middle Miocene, Early Badenian, northern Austria). Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums Wien A 104: 237-249 [English with German abstract]. PDF fulltext
Further reading
- Lambrecht, Kálmán(1933): Familia Sulidae. In: Handbuch der Palaeornithologie: 284-287 [German]. Gebrüder Bornträger, Berlin.
- Mlíkovský, Jirí (2007): Taxonomic identity of Eostega lebedinskyi LAMBRECHT, 1929 (Aves) from the middle Eocene of Romania. Annalen des Naturhistorischen Museums in Wien A 109: 19-27 [English with German abstract]. PDF fulltext
External links
Wikispecies has information related to Sulidae.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Sulidae.
- Live camera from Eldey Iceland
- Sulidae videos on the Internet Bird Collection
- FAMILY SULIDAE
