Ground hornbill

Ground hornbill
Temporal range: Middle Miocene to present
Head of the male Abyssinian
ground hornbill (B. abyssinicus)
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Bucerotiformes
Family: Bucorvidae
Bonaparte, 1854
Genus: Bucorvus
Lesson, 1830
Species

Bucorvus leadbeateri
Bucorvus abyssinicus
See text for the possible inclusion of Bycanistes

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 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

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]

Genus Bucorvus – Lesson, 1830 – two species
Common name Scientific name and subspecies Range Size and ecology IUCN status and estimated population
Abyssinian ground hornbill, northern ground hornbill


Male
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Female

Bucorvus abyssinicus
(Boddaert, 1783) 		southern Mauritania, Senegal and Guinea east to Eritrea, Ethiopia, north western Somalia, north western Kenya and Uganda
Map of range 		Size:

Habitat:

Diet: 		 LC 


Southern ground hornbill


Male
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Female

Bucorvus leadbeateri
(Vigors, 1825) 		northern Namibia and Angola to northern South Africa and southern Zimbabwe to Burundi and Kenya
Map of range 		Size:

Habitat:

Diet: 		 VU 



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

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Bucorvus.
  1. ^ a b Kinnaird Margaret F. and O‘Brien< Timothy G.; The Ecology and Conservation of Asian Hornbills: Farmers of the Forest; pp. 20-23. ISBN 0226437124
  2. ^ Wasser, D. E. and Sherman, P.W.; “Avian longevities and their interpretation under evolutionary theories of senescence” in Journal of Zoology 2 November 2009
  3. ^ Skutch; Alexander Frank (author) and Gardner, Dana (illustrator) Helpers at birds' nests : a worldwide survey of cooperative breeding and related behavior pp. 69-71. Published 1987 by University of Iowa Press. ISBN 0877451508
  4. ^ Lesson, René (1830). Traité d'Ornithologie, ou Tableau Méthodique (in French). Vol. 1. Paris: F.G. Levrault. p. 256 (livre 4).
  5. ^ Peters, James Lee, ed. (1945). Check-list of Birds of the World. Vol. 5. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 272.
  6. ^ Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 80. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  7. ^ Gonzalez, J.-C.T.; Sheldon, B.C.; Collar, N.J.; Tobias, J.A. (2013). "A comprehensive molecular phylogeny for the hornbills (Aves: Bucerotidae)". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 67 (2): 468–483. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2013.02.012. PMID 23438388.
  8. ^ Gill, Frank; Donsker, David, eds. (2019). "Mousebirds, Cuckoo Roller, trogons, hoopoes, hornbills". World Bird List Version 9.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 23 July 2019.
  9. ^ Kemp, A. C. 1995 The Hornbills. Oxford University Press, Oxford.