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Zapornia

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Zapornia
Baillon's crake, Zapornia pusilla
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Gruiformes
Family: Rallidae
Genus: Zapornia
Leach, 1816
Type species
Gallinula minuta[1]
Montagu, 1813
Species

10 living, and see text

Synonyms

Aphanolimnas Sharpe, 1892
Aphanolymnas (lapsus)
Corethrura G.R.Gray, 1846 (non Hope, 1843[verification needed]: preoccupied)
Kittlitzia Hartlaub, 1891[verification needed] (non Hartert, 1891: preoccupied)
Limnobaenus Sundevall, 1873
Limnocorax Peters, 1854
Nesophylax Murphy, 1924
Pennula Dole, 1878
Porzanoidea Mathews, 1912
Porzanula Frohawk, 1892
Schoenocrex Roberts, 1922
Schoenoscrex (lapsus)

Zapornia is a genus of birds in the rail family Rallidae. It was included in Porzana for much of the late 20th century.[2] These smallish to tiny rails are found across most of the world, but are entirely absent from the Americas except as wind-blown stray birds (which are regularly encountered on the Atlantic coasts however). A number of species, and probably an even larger number of prehistorically extinct ones, are known only from small Pacific islands; several of these lost the ability to fly in the absence of terrestrial predators. They are somewhat less aquatic than Porzana proper, inhabiting the edges of wetlands, reedbelts, but also drier grass- and shrubland and in some cases open forest.[3]

They are medium brown to blackish above, at least from the neck backwards but usually also on the top of the head, uniformly coloured or with some rather inconspicuous (unlike the boldly spotted Porzana proper) pattern of some blackish and/or whitish spots on the wings and back and/or a grey stripe above the eyes. The lower parts, from the bill to the legs, have grey plumage in most species - ranging from pale to almost black -, but are light ruddy-brown in a few. Between legs and tail, the plumage is brown to black, and in many species features more or less conspicuous whitish barring as in many other genera of rails (including Porzana proper). Some species (in particular small-island ones) appear uniformly drab brown or blackish-grey, with little discernible pattern when not seen up close. The eyes are usually red to chestnut-brown; the bill is greenish-yellow in most species, but bright yellow or blackish in a few. The legs have a greenish to reddish colouration even in the otherwise quite uniformly dusky species, and in some species are bright red[3]

Taxonomy and systematics

The genus Zapornia was introduced in 1816 by the English zoologist William Elford Leach in a catalogue of animals in the British Museum. He included a single species, the Little crake, which is therefore the type species.[4] The genus name is a near-anagram of the French ornithologist Louis-Pierre Vieillot's genus Porzana.[5]

However, Leach's proposal was not widely adopted. During the 1840s it was used briefly as a "wastebin taxon" for newly-discovered small rails from all over the world, few of which actually belonged to today's Zapornia clade; in 1880, even the Slender-billed flufftail was placed here, which eventually turned out to be no rail (family Rallidae), but rather an aberrant crake-like member of the flufftail family Sarothruridae. Subsequently, Leach's genus was generally synonymized with Porzana, assuming that species such as the Little and Baillon's crake were merely diminutive representatives of that genus. From the late 19th to the mid-20th century, any newly-discovered Zapornia crakes were either assigned to new and usually monotypic genera, or – increasingly often – lumped with their presumed relatives in Porzana. In his 1973 review of rail systematics, Storrs Olson found the mutual delimitation of the (loosely-circumscribed) Porphyrio and Amaurornis "[o]ne of the most difficult problems in rail taxonomy" and found no way to resolve it to his satisfaction. He concluded that the two genera were polyphyletic with regard to each other, and recommended including the numerous small segregate genera of Pacific island crakes in Porphyria, and the African crakes sometimes separated as Limnocorax in Amaurornis, until a satisfying solution for the delimitation of the two larger genera could be proposed.[6]

The first cladistic analyses, using morphological data, found it almost impossible to resolve any phylogenetic structure in Porzana and similar genera, but indicated that the entire group was closely related to Amaurornis bush-hen and the Laterallus crakes, as well as to coots (Fulica) and moorhen (Gallinula).[3][7] Molecular phylogenetic studies starting in 2002[8] revealed that Porzana proper was a well-distinct lineage which had a basal position among the entire aforementioned group, to which the subfamily name Himanthornithinae was applied as it also included the singular Nkulengu rail of genus Himantornis, a highly aberrant tropical rainforest species that was long considered to be the most "primitive" living rail. However, molecular data places not only the Nkulengu rail within the subfamily containing Porzana and its allies, but also the huge swamphen (Porphyrio) which morphological analysis had resolved as another one of the most ancient extant lineages of rails (although Olson in 1973 had correctly allied them with the moorhen and Porphyrio). Unlike the other rail subfamily, Rallinae, which includes mostly mid-sized amphibious species, the Himanthornithinae unite both very large and very small rails, as well as decidedly aquatic and strongly terrestrial lineages; it is thus unsurprising that the morphological data could not resolve such an adaptive radiation to satisfaction.[2][3][9][10]

As for the Zapornia crakes, they were found to be well distinct from Porzana, leading to the reinstatement of the old genus. In addition, some species traditionally placed in Amaurornis were found to actually belong in Zapornia. Surprisingly (except from a biogeographical perspective), the closest living relatives of Zapornia were found to be a group of South Asian crakes of genus Rallina, whose range is essentially surrounded by that of Zapornia. Rallina crakes are adapted to a more terrestrial habitat and thus differ more strongly from Zapornia in anatomy than might be expected given their close relationship; also, Rallina as traditionally circumscribed included a number of species which – similar to the Slender-billed flufftail initially being placed in Zapornia – actually belonged to the flufftail family and are nowadays separated as genus Rallicula. The morphology of Rallina is thus strongly convergent with the unrelated Rallicula flufftails, as well as strongly divergent from its actual closest relatives in Zapornia, causing purely morphological studies to fail recovering their true relationships.[2][7][10][11][12][13]

Species

The genus contains the following extant species:[11][12]

Image Common name Scientific name Distribution
Ruddy-breasted crake Zapornia fusca
Formerly in Porzana		 South, East, and Southeast Asia
Band-bellied crake Zapornia paykullii
Formerly in Porzana		 Breeds in northeastern Asia, winters in Southeast Asia
Black crake Zapornia flavirostra
Formerly in Amaurornis, Limnocorax or Porzana		 Sub-Saharan Africa
Brown crake Zapornia akool
Formerly in Amaurornis or Porzana		 South Asia
Little crake Zapornia parva
Formerly in Porzana		 Breeds from Central Europe to western Asia, winters in northern Africa and Southwest Asia
Baillon's crake Zapornia pusilla
Formerly in Porzana		 Resident in southern and eastern Africa, Madagascar, parts of Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand; also breeds across temperate Eurasia and winters in South and Southeast Asia to southern Japan
Black-tailed crake Zapornia bicolor
Formerly in Amaurornis or Porzana		 Northern inland of Southeast Asia
Sakalava rail Zapornia olivieri
Formerly in Amaurornis or Porzana		 Western Madagascar
Spotless crake Zapornia tabuensis
Formerly in Porzana		 Philippines, New Guinea and Australia, across southern Pacific Ocean to Marquesas Islands and New Zealand
Henderson crake Zapornia atra
Formerly in Nesophylax or Porzana		 Henderson Island, southeastern Polynesia

Recent extinctions

As mentioned above, a number of recently-extinct Pacific island rails are also assigned to Zapornis nowadays:

Image Common name Scientific name Distribution
Laysan rail Zapornia palmeri
Formerly in Porzana or Porzanula		 Laysan (and introduced to Midway), Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, northern Polynesia; extinct mid-late 1944
Hawaiian rail Zapornia sandwichensis
Formerly in Pennula or Porzana		 Eastern uplands of the Big Island of Hawaii, northeastern Polynesia; extinct ~1890
Kosrae crake Zapornia monasa
Formerly in Aphanolimnas or Porzana		 Kosrae and possibly Ponapé, southern Micronesia; extinct mid-19th century
Tahiti crake Zapornia nigra
Formerly in Nesophylax or Porzana		 Tahiti, central Polynesia; extinct ~1800

Prehistoric extinctions

In addition, a number of prehistorically extinct rails known from subfossils found on oceanic islands have been placed into Porzana. Their former range is not anywhere close to the present-day range of Porzana proper (nor much closer to the known fossil record of the genus), but within or closely adjacent to the range of Zapornia as attested by living or historically known species. Consequently, it is more likely that most or all of them are actually Zapornia, although a few might actually belong to the other major radiation of Pacific island rails, the larger Hypotaenidia species of subfamily Rallinae:[14]

References

  1. ^ "Rallidae". aviansystematics.org. The Trust for Avian Systematics. Retrieved 2023-07-27.
  2. ^ a b c Garcia-R, Juan C.; Gibb, Gillian C. & Trewick, Steve A. (2014): Deep global evolutionary radiation in birds: Diversification and trait evolution in the cosmopolitan bird family Rallidae. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 81: 96–108. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2014.09.008 PDF fulltext
  3. ^ a b c d Taylor, P. Barry & van Perlo, Ber (1998): Rails: a guide to the rails, crakes, gallinules, and coots of the world (Helm Identification Guides). Yale University Press, New Haven. ISBN 0-300-07758-0.
  4. ^ Leach, William Elford (1816). Systematic Catalogue of the Specimens of the Indigenous Mammalia and Birds that are Preserved in the British Museum: with Their Localities and Authorities. London: Printed by Richard and Arthur Taylor. p. 34.
  5. ^ Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 413. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  6. ^ Olson, Storrs L. (1973): A Classification of the Rallidae. Wilson Bull. 85(4): 381-416. PDF fulltext
  7. ^ a b Livezey, Bradley C. (1998): A phylogenetic analysis of the Gruiformes (Aves) based on morphological characters, with an emphasis on the rails (Rallidae). Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. B 353(1378), 2077-2151. doi:10.1098/rstb.1998.0353 PDF fulltext
  8. ^ Slikas, Beth; Olson, Storrs L. & Fleischer, Robert C. (2002): Rapid, independent evolution of flightlessness in four species of Pacific Island rails (Rallidae): an analysis based on mitochondrial sequence data. J. Avian Biol. 33(1): 5-14. doi:10.1034/j.1600-048X.2002.330103.x PDF fulltext
  9. ^ Kirchman, Jeremy J. (2012): Speciation of flightless rails on islands: A DNA-based phylogeny of the typical rails of the Pacific. Auk 129(1): .56–69. doi:10.1525/auk.2011.11096 PDF fulltext
  10. ^ a b Kirchman, Jeremy J.; McInerney, Nancy Rotzel; Giarla, Thomas C.; Olson, Storrs L.; Slikas, Elizabeth & Fleischer, Robert C. (2021): Phylogeny based on ultra-conserved elements clarifies the evolution of rails and allies (Ralloidea) and is the basis for a revised classification. Ornithology 138(4): .1–21. doi:10.1093/ornithology/ukab042 PDF fulltext
  11. ^ a b Gill, Frank & Donsker, David (eds.) (2019): International Ornithologists' Union World Bird List Version 10.2: Flufftails, finfoots, rails, trumpeters, cranes, limpkin. Retrieved 25 July 2020
  12. ^ a b Dickinson, Edward C. & Remsen, James Van Jr. (eds.) (2013): The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World Vol.1: Non-passerines (4th ed.): 158. Aves Press, Eastbourne, UK. ISBN 978-0-9568611-0-8 Online version
  13. ^ Richard O. Prum Berv, Jacob S.; Dornburg, Alex; Field, Daniel J.; Townsend, Jeffrey P.; Lemmon, Emily Moriarty & Alan R. Lemmon (2015): A comprehensive phylogeny of birds (Aves) using targeted next-generation DNA sequencing. Nature 526(7574): 569–573. doi:10.1038/nature15697 PDF fulltext
  14. ^ Garcia-R, Juan C. & Matzke, Nicholas J. (2021): Trait-dependent dispersal in rails (Aves: Rallidae): Historical biogeography of a cosmopolitan bird clade. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 159: 107106. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2021.107106 PDF preprint


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