Coraciiformes
Encyclopedia
The Coraciiformes are a group of usually colorful near passerine
Near passerine
Near passerine or higher land-bird assemblage are terms often given to arboreal birds or those most often believed to be related to the true passerines due to ecological similarities; the group corresponds to some extent with the Anomalogonatae of Garrod All near passerines are land birds...

 bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

s including the kingfisher
Kingfisher
Kingfishers are a group of small to medium sized brightly coloured birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species being found in the Old World and Australia...

s, the Hoopoe
Hoopoe
The Hoopoe is a colourful bird that is found across Afro-Eurasia, notable for its distinctive 'crown' of feathers. It is the only extant species in the family Upupidae. One insular species, the Giant Hoopoe of Saint Helena, is extinct, and the Madagascar subspecies of the Hoopoe is sometimes...

, the bee-eater
Bee-eater
The bee-eaters are a group of near-passerine birds in the family Meropidae. Most species are found in Africa and Asia but others occur in southern Europe, Australia, and New Guinea. They are characterised by richly coloured plumage, slender bodies, and usually elongated central tail feathers...

s, the roller
Roller
The rollers are an Old World family, Coraciidae, of near passerine birds. The group gets its name from the aerial acrobatics some of these birds perform during courtship or territorial flights. Rollers resemble crows in size and build, and share the colourful appearance of kingfishers and...

s, and the hornbill
Hornbill
Hornbills are a family of bird found in tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia and Melanesia. They are characterized by a long, down-curved bill which is frequently brightly-colored and sometimes has a casque on the upper mandible. Both the common English and the scientific name of the family...

s. They generally have syndactyly
Syndactyly
Syndactyly is a condition wherein two or more digits are fused together. It occurs normally in some mammals, such as the siamang and kangaroo, but is an unusual condition in humans.-Classification:...

, with three forward-pointing toes (and toes 3 & 4 fused at their base), though in many kingfishers one of these is missing.

This is largely an Old World
Old World
The Old World consists of those parts of the world known to classical antiquity and the European Middle Ages. It is used in the context of, and contrast with, the "New World" ....

 order
Order (biology)
In scientific classification used in biology, the order is# a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family...

, with the representation in the New World
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...

 limited to the dozen or so species of todies
Tody
The todies are a family, Todidae, of Caribbean birds in the order Coraciiformes, which also includes the kingfishers, bee-eaters and rollers. The family has one genus, Todus...

 and motmot
Motmot
The motmots or Momotidae are a family of birds in the near passerine order Coraciiformes, which also includes the kingfishers, bee-eaters and rollers. All extant motmots are restricted to woodland or forest in the Neotropics, and the largest diversity is in Middle America. They have a colourful...

s, and a mere handful of the more than 90 species of kingfishers. This is the most diverse bird order in body weight, ranging from the 5.5 gram Puerto Rican Tody
Puerto Rican Tody
The Puerto Rican Tody is a tody endemic to the archipelago of Puerto Rico. Despite is scientific name, Todus mexicanus, it is endemic to Puerto Rico...

 (Todus mexicanus) to the 4.5 kg Southern Ground Hornbill (Bucorvus leadbeateri), if the hornbills indeed belong under this classification.

The name Coraciiformes means "Raven
Raven
Raven is the common name given to several larger-bodied members of the genus Corvus—but in Europe and North America the Common Raven is normally implied...

-like", which is a misnomer (ravens are passerines). Specifically, it comes from the Latin language "Corax", meaning "Raven" and Latin "Forma", meaning "form", which is the standard ending for bird orders. [Terres p 104]

Systematics

This order has been seen to be something of a mixed assortment, and the Coraciiformes may be considered as including only the rollers. All the other families would then be considered to represent lineages of birds distantly related to Coraciiformes. This seems to be oversplitting
Lumpers and splitters
Lumping and splitting refers to a well-known problem in any discipline which has to place individual examples into rigorously defined categories. The lumper/splitter problem occurs when there is the need to create classifications and assign examples to them, for example schools of literature,...

, as most Coraciiformes indeed form a reasonably robust clade
Clade
A clade is a group consisting of a species and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The idea that such a "natural group" of organisms should be grouped together and given a taxonomic name is central to biological...

.

Analysis of nDNA c-myc and RAG-1 exon
Exon
An exon is a nucleic acid sequence that is represented in the mature form of an RNA molecule either after portions of a precursor RNA have been removed by cis-splicing or when two or more precursor RNA molecules have been ligated by trans-splicing. The mature RNA molecule can be a messenger RNA...

 as well as mtDNA myoglobin
Myoglobin
Myoglobin is an iron- and oxygen-binding protein found in the muscle tissue of vertebrates in general and in almost all mammals. It is related to hemoglobin, which is the iron- and oxygen-binding protein in blood, specifically in the red blood cells. The only time myoglobin is found in the...

 intron
Intron
An intron is any nucleotide sequence within a gene that is removed by RNA splicing to generate the final mature RNA product of a gene. The term intron refers to both the DNA sequence within a gene, and the corresponding sequence in RNA transcripts. Sequences that are joined together in the final...

 2 sequence
DNA sequence
The sequence or primary structure of a nucleic acid is the composition of atoms that make up the nucleic acid and the chemical bonds that bond those atoms. Because nucleic acids, such as DNA and RNA, are unbranched polymers, this specification is equivalent to specifying the sequence of...

 data demonstrates that the Coraciiformes can be divided into a basal
Basal (phylogenetics)
In phylogenetics, a basal clade is the earliest clade to branch in a larger clade; it appears at the base of a cladogram.A basal group forms an outgroup to the rest of the clade, such as in the following example:...

 group that is not too distantly related to the Piciformes
Piciformes
Nine families of largely arboreal birds make up the order Piciformes, the best-known of them being the Picidae, which includes the woodpeckers and close relatives...

, and a derived suborder containing mainly kingfishers (Johansson & Ericson, 2003). The Cuckoo-roller
Cuckoo-roller
The Cuckoo Roller is the only bird in the family Leptosomatidae, which is usually considered to be within the order Coraciiformes, which also includes the kingfishers, bee-eaters and rollers. However, the position of this family is not very clear. Morphological evidence may suggest a placement...

's true affinities appear to lie elsewhere. The trogons and hornbills are either very basal lineages, or might be considered distinct own orders; the latter are apparently slightly closer to the rollers than the former. The entire group (possibly excluding the Cuckoo-roller) and the Piciformes are closely related to the Passeriformes (Johansson & Ericson 2003; see also Near passerine
Near passerine
Near passerine or higher land-bird assemblage are terms often given to arboreal birds or those most often believed to be related to the true passerines due to ecological similarities; the group corresponds to some extent with the Anomalogonatae of Garrod All near passerines are land birds...

).

Several extinct coraciiform families are only known from Paleogene
Paleogene
The Paleogene is a geologic period and system that began 65.5 ± 0.3 and ended 23.03 ± 0.05 million years ago and comprises the first part of the Cenozoic Era...

 fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

s. They probably belong to the basal group and are sometimes difficult to assign because they were even closer still to the Piciformes (see also Neanis
Neanis
Neanis is an extinct genus of bird probably related to woodpeckers and toucans. It contains at least one species, N. schucherti; N. kistneri resembles this, but it probably belongs to a distinct genus and may not be closely related. Both are known from the Late Wasatchian stratum of the Early...

). In addition, there are some prehistoric genera
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 which are likewise difficult to place into a family. At least the Eocoraciidae are very basal, but the Late Eocene
Eocene
The Eocene Epoch, lasting from about 56 to 34 million years ago , is a major division of the geologic timescale and the second epoch of the Paleogene Period in the Cenozoic Era. The Eocene spans the time from the end of the Palaeocene Epoch to the beginning of the Oligocene Epoch. The start of the...

 (some 35 mya) Geranopteridae form a superfamily
Taxonomic rank
In biological classification, rank is the level in a taxonomic hierarchy. Examples of taxonomic ranks are species, genus, family, and class. Each rank subsumes under it a number of less general categories...

 Coracioidea with the extant rollers and ground-rollers already (Mayr & Mourer-Chauviré 2000). A few prehistoric taxa of the present-day families have been described; see the family articles for details.

Taxonomic sequence

Unresolved
  • Genus Quasisyndactylus (fossil
    Fossil
    Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

    ; Middle Eocene of Messel, Germany) - alcediniform, basal?
  • Genus Cryptornis (fossil
    Fossil
    Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

    ; Late Eocene of France) – bucerotid? geranopterid?
  • Family Primobucconidae (fossil
    Fossil
    Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

    )
  • Coraciiformes gen. et spp. indet. PQ 1216, QU 15640 (fossil
    Fossil
    Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

    ; Late Eocene of Quercy, France: Mayr & Mourer-Chauviré 2000)
  • Genus Protornis (fossil
    Fossil
    Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

    : Oligocene of Switzerland) – basal to motmotids and meropids?


A recent study suggest that the following families may belong to a separate order called Bucerotiformes. The results still in dispute though.
  • Family Bucerotidae (Hornbills)
  • Family Upupidae (Hoopoe)
  • Family Phoeniculidae (Woodhoopoes)


The Leptosomatidae (Cuckoo-roller) probably do not belong here. The trogon
Trogon
The trogons and quetzals are birds in the order Trogoniformes which contains only one family, the Trogonidae. The family contains 39 species in eight genera. The fossil record of the trogons dates back 49 million years to the mid-Eocene. They might constitute a member of the basal radiation of...

s are sometimes placed here as a family Trogonidae. The Late Eocene Palaeospizidae are sometimes also placed in the Coraciiformes, as are the Early to Middle Eocene Primobucconidae and the Middle Eocene to Early Oligocene Sylphornithidae. The Primobucconidae at least indeed seem to belong here.

Basal group
  • Family Eocoraciidae (fossil
    Fossil
    Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

    ; Middle Eocene of Messel, Germany)
  • Family Messelirrisoridae (fossil
    Fossil
    Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

    ; Middle Eocene)
  • Family Geranopteridae (fossil
    Fossil
    Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...

    ; Late Eocene of Quercy, France - Early Miocene of Czechia) - includes "Nupharanassa" bohemica
  • Family Coraciidae (rollers)
  • Family Brachypteraciidae (ground-rollers)
  • Family Meropidae (bee-eaters)


Suborder Alcedini
  • Family Todidae (todies)
  • Family Momotidae (motmots)
  • Family Alcedinidae (river-kingfishers)
  • Family Halcyonidae (tree-kingfishers)
  • Family Cerylidae (water- or belted kingfishers)

External links

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