Shanks

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For other meanings, see Shanks (disambiguation)
iShanks
Common Redshank
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Charadriiformes
Family: Scolopacidae
Genera

Tringa
Xenus
Actitis
and see article text

The shanks and tattlers are wading bird species in a number of genera characterised by a medium length bill and long, often brightly coloured legs. They chase visible prey, rather than probing like most waders.

These species are more associated with temperate regions for breeding than the rest of this largely arctic family. They are more often found in fresh water environments than many waders.

Unusually for waders, some of this group, notably Green Sandpiper, nest in trees, using the old nests of other birds, usually thrushes.

[edit] Systematics and evolution

The shanks' and tattlers' closest relatives are the phalaropes, as well as the turnstones and calidrids (van Tuinen et al. 2004). The present group is now considered to make up the large genus Tringa and two very small ones, similar to the situation found in many other shorebird lineages such as calidrids, snipes and woodcocks, or gulls. The Willet and the tattlers have turned out to be actually assignable to Tringa (Pereira & Baker, 2005); these genus changes were subsequently adopted by the AOU (Banks et al., 2006).

The same study has indicated that some morphological characters such as details of the furcula and pelvis have evolved convergently and are no indicators of close relationship. Similarly, the leg/foot color wildly varies between close relatives, with the Spotted Redshank, the Greater Yellowlegs, and the Common Greenshank for example being more closely related among each other than to any other species in the group; the ancestral coloration of the legs and feet was fairly certainly drab buffish as in e.g. the Green Sandpiper. On the other hand, the molecular phylogeny reveals that the general habitus and size as well as the overall plumage pattern are good indicators of an evolutionary relationship in this gourp.

The Spotted Greenshank, a rare and endangered species, was not available for molecular analyses. It is fairly aberrant and was formerly placed in the monotypic genus Pseudototanus. It appears closest overall to the semipalmata-flavipes and the stagnatilis-totanus-glareola groups, though it also has some similarities to the Greater Yellowlegs and Common Greenshank.

FAMILY SCOLOPACIDAE


Fossil shanks are known at least since the Mio-/Pliocene (c. 5 mya), possibly even since the Eo-/Oligocene (some 33-30 mya) which would be far earlier than most extant genera of birds. However, it is uncertain whether Tringa edwardsi indeed belongs into the present-day genus or is a distinct, ancestral form. The time of the shank-phalarope divergence has been tentatively dated at 22 mya, at the beginning of the Miocene (Paton et al., 2003); no fossils are known dating close to that time, but even if the dating is largely conjectural, it suggests that T. edwardsi does indeed not belong into the modern genus. Indeed, molecular dating (Pereira & Baker, 2005) - which is not too reliable however - indicates that the diversification into the known lineages occurred between 20 and 5 mya, which suggests that the evolutionary history of tattlers and relatives may not at all be documented by the known fossils.

"Totanus" (=Tringa) teruelensis is apparently not a tattler or shank (Olson, 1985).

  • ?Tringa edwardsi (Quercy Late Eocene/Early Oligocene of Mouillac, France)
  • Tringa sp. 1 (Late Miocene/Early Pliocene of Lee Creek Mine, USA)
  • Tringa sp. 2 (Late Miocene/Early Pliocene of Lee Creek Mine, USA)
  • Tringa antiqua (Late Pliocene of Meade County, USA)
  • Tringa ameghini (Late Pleistocene of Talara Tar Seeps, Peru)

[edit] See also

[edit] References

  • Banks, Richard C.; Cicero, Carla; Dunn, Jon L.; Kratter, Andrew W.; Rasmussen, Pamela C.; Remsen, J. V. Jr.; Rising, James D. & Stotz, Douglas F. (2006): Forty-seventh Supplement to the American Ornithologists' Union Check-list of North American Birds. Auk 123(3): 926–936. DOI: 10.1642/0004-8038(2006)123[926:FSTTAO]2.0.CO;2 PDF fulltext
  • Olson, Storrs L. (1985): Section X.D.2.b. Scolopacidae. In: Farner, D.S.; King, J.R. & Parkes, Kenneth C. (eds.): Avian Biology 8: 174-175. Academic Press, New York.
  • Paton, Tara A.; Baker, Allan J.; Groth, J. G. & Barrowclough, G. F. (2003): RAG-1 sequences resolve phylogenetic relationships within charadriiform birds. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 29: 268-278. DOI:10.1016/S1055-7903(03)00098-8 (HTML abstract)
  • Pereira, Sérgio Luiz & Baker, Alan J. (2005): Multiple Gene Evidence for Parallel Evolution and Retention of Ancestral Morphological States in the Shanks (Charadriiformes: Scolopacidae). Condor 107(3): 514–526. DOI: 10.1650/0010-5422(2005)107[0514:MGEFPE]2.0.CO;2 HTML abstract
  • van Tuinen, Marcel; Waterhouse, David & Dyke, Gareth J. (2004): Avian molecular systematics on the rebound: a fresh look at modern shorebird phylogenetic relationships. Journal of Avian Biology 35(3): 191-194. PDF fulltext
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