Ground hornbill
Genus of birds From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The ground hornbills (Bucorvidae) are a family of the order Bucerotiformes, with a single genus Bucorvus and two extant species. The family is endemic to sub-Saharan Africa: the Abyssinian ground hornbill occurs in a belt from Senegal east to Ethiopia, and the southern ground hornbill occurs in southern and East Africa.
| Ground hornbill Temporal range: Middle Miocene to present | |
|---|---|
| |
| Head of the male Abyssinian ground hornbill (B. abyssinicus) | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Bucerotiformes |
| Family: | Bucorvidae Bonaparte, 1854 |
| Genus: | Bucorvus Lesson, 1830 |
| Species | |
|
Bucorvus leadbeateri | |
Ground hornbills are large, with adults around a metre tall. Both species are ground-dwelling, unlike other hornbills. Also unlike most other hornbills, they are carnivorous and feed on insects, snakes, other birds, amphibians and even tortoises.[1] They are among the longest-lived of all birds,[2] and the larger southern species is possibly the slowest-breeding (triennially) and longest-lived of all birds.[3]
Taxonomy
Summarize
Perspective
The genus Bucorvus was introduced, originally as a subgenus, by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1830 with the Abyssinian ground hornbill Bucorvus abyssinicus as the type species.[4][5] The generic name is derived from the name of the genus Buceros introduced by Carl Linnaeus in 1758 for the Asian hornbills where corvus is the Latin word for a "raven".[6]
A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 found that the genus Bucorvus was sister to the rest of the hornbills.[7]
The genus Bucorvus contains two species:[8]
| Common name | Scientific name and subspecies | Range | Size and ecology | IUCN status and estimated population |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Abyssinian ground hornbill, northern ground hornbill
|
Bucorvus abyssinicus (Boddaert, 1783) |
southern Mauritania, Senegal and Guinea east to Eritrea, Ethiopia, north western Somalia, north western Kenya and Uganda |
Size: Habitat: Diet: |
LC
|
| Southern ground hornbill
|
Bucorvus leadbeateri (Vigors, 1825) |
northern Namibia and Angola to northern South Africa and southern Zimbabwe to Burundi and Kenya |
Size: Habitat: Diet: |
VU
|
_male_(30397098174).jpg)
_-side_beak_open.jpg)
A prehistoric ground hornbill, Bucorvus brailloni, has been described from fossil bones in Morocco, suggesting that prior to Quaternary glaciations the genus was either much more widespread or differently distributed.[9]
It is currently thought that the ground hornbills, along with Tockus and Tropicranus, are almost exclusively carnivorous[1] and lack the gular pouch that allows other, less closely related hornbill genera to store fruit.
References
Wikiwand - on
Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.