Black-fronted Piping-guan

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Black-fronted Piping-guan

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Galliformes
Family:	Cracidae
Genus:	Aburria
Species:	A. jacutinga

Binomial name

Aburria jacutinga
(Spix, 1825)

Synonyms

Penelope jacutinga Spix, 1825 Pipile jacutinga (Spix, 1825)

The Black-fronted Piping-guan, Aburria jacutinga (sometimes still called Pipile jacutinga), is a bird in the chachalaca, guan and curassow family Cracidae. This species occurs in southern Brazil and adjacent Argentina and Paraguay. It has become quite rare in recent decades due to hunting and habitat destruction (BirdLife International 2004).

It is a large bird, some 63-74 cm in length, and similar in general appearance to a slim turkey with thin neck and small head. Aburria jacutinga is mainly black with a bluish gloss; it has a conspicuous white wing patch bearing 3 neat rows of tiny black dots. The large crest is whitish, and it has a red throat wattle with a dark blue patch at the front. Its naked whitish eye-ring and black-feathered face and forehead are unique in its genus. The legs and feet are red.

The only piping-guan which also occurs in its range is Gray's Piping-guan (Aburria cumanensis grayi) which barely reaches E Paraguay. This bird has a pale bluish pendulous wattle, a smaller wing patch, and an entirely naked white face and white forehead.

[edit] Systematics

Formerly, Aburria jacutinga was considered one of the two species of piping-guan, the other being the variable "Common Piping-guan". However, analysis of mtDNA, osteology and biogeography (Grau et al., 2005) did not only show that the Wattled Guan is an aberrant hypermelanistic piping-guan, but vindicated the hypothesis than many taxa of the "Common Piping-guan" were actually distinct species. The Black-fronted Piping-guan is apparently the most basal member of its genus, but its precise relationship with the Wattled Piping-guan is not fully resolved (Grau et al. 2005).

[edit] References

BirdLife International (2006). Pipile jacutinga. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 26 Feb 2007. Database entry includes a brief justification of why this species is endangered and the criteria used

Grau, Erwin T.; Pereira, Sérgio Luiz; Silveira, Luís Fábio; Höfling, Elizabeth & Wanjtal, Anita (2005): Molecular phylogenetics and biogeography of Neotropical piping guans (Aves: Galliformes): Pipile Bonaparte, 1856 is synonym of Aburria Reichenbach, 1853. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 35: 637-645. DOI:doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2004.12.004 PDF fulltext