Malayan Peacock-pheasant

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Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Galliformes
Family:	Phasianidae
Genus:	Polyplectron
Species:	P. malacense

Binomial name

Polyplectron malacense
(Scopoli, 1786)

Synonyms

Pavo malacensis Scopoli, 1786
Polyplectron bicalcaratum (non Linnaeus, 1758)
Polyplectron malacense malacense

The Malayan Peacock-pheasant, Polyplectron malacense also known as Crested Peacock-pheasant or Malaysian Peacock-pheasant is a medium-sized, up to 53cm long, spotted black, brownish pheasant with an elongated dark blue green crest, bare red facial skin, bluish-white iris and green ocelli on upperbody plumage and its tail of twenty two feathers. The female is smaller and duller than male.

A shy and elusive bird, the Malayan Peacock-pheasant is distributed and endemic to lowland forests of Malay Peninsula. At one time, this species was widespread in Malaysia, Thailand and also reported from Myanmar, Singapore and Sumatra. It is now disappeared from most of its former range. The remaining population confined to central Malaysia.

Together with the even more elusive Bornean Peacock-pheasant - its sister species -, and the more distantly related Palawan Peacock-pheasant it represents a basal group in its genus; their radiation probably took place during the Pliocene (Kimball et al. 2001)^[1]. The former was in earlier times usually considered a subspecies of the present bird^{[citation needed]}.

Due to ongoing habitat loss, small population size and limited range, the Malayan Peacock-pheasant is evaluated as Vulnerable on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. It is listed on Appendix II of CITES.

1 Gallery
2 References
- 2.1 Footnotes
3 External links

[edit] Gallery

male's facial profile

male's ornamental plumes

[edit] References

BirdLife International (2004). Polyplectron malacense. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 11 May 2006. Database entry includes a range map, a brief justification of why this species is vulnerable, and the criteria used
Kimball, Rebecca T.; Braun, Edward L.; Ligon, J. David; Lucchini, Vittorio & Randi, Ettore (2001): A molecular phylogeny of the peacock-pheasants (Galliformes: Polyplectron spp.) indicates loss and reduction of ornamental traits and display behaviours. Biol. J. Linn. Soc. 73(2): 187–198. HTML abstract

[edit] Footnotes

^ Note that the molecular clock calibration method used by Kimball et al. (2001) is now known to be inappropriate, yielding far too low estimates in galliform birds.