Gruiformes
Cranes, Rails, Coots, and allies
John Harshman
This tree diagram shows the relationships between several groups of organisms.
The root of the current tree connects the organisms featured in this tree to their containing group and the rest of the Tree of Life. The basal branching point in the tree represents the ancestor of the other groups in the tree. This ancestor diversified over time into several descendent subgroups, which are represented as internal nodes and terminal taxa to the right.
You can click on the root to travel down the Tree of Life all the way to the root of all Life, and you can click on the names of descendent subgroups to travel up the Tree of Life all the way to individual species.
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close boxDiscussion of Phylogenetic Relationships
The traditional order Gruiformes is not a natural group, and scientists have been detaching families from it for some time, starting with Pedionomidae (plains wanderer) to Charadriiformes, then Turnicidae (buttonquail) also to Charadriiformes. Recently Cariamidae (seriemas), Otididae (bustards), Mesitornithidae (mesites), Rhynochetidae (kagu), and Eurypygidae (sunbittern) have also been remove from the order. Their true relationships are not clear except that the latter two form a clade.
What remains is the core of Gruiformes, the former suborder Grues, which show close affinities in both morphological (Cracraft, 1982; Livezey, 1998) and DNA (Sibley and Ahlquist, 1990; Houde et al., 1997; Fain et al., 2007, Hackett et al. 2008) comparisons. Relationships here are based on Hackett et al. (2008).
The traditional family Rallidae is paraphyletic, since one unusual rail genus, Sarothrura (flufftails, here elevated to family level) is more closely related to Heliornithidae (finfoots) than to typical rails.
References
Cracraft, J. 1982. Phylogenetic relationships and transatlantic biogeography of some gruiform birds. Geobios, Mem. Spec. 6: 393-402.
Fain, M. G., and P. Houde. 2004. Parallel radiations in the primary clades of birds. Evolution 58:2558-2573.
Fain, M. G., C. Krajewski, and P. Houde. 2007. Phylogeny of “core Gruiformes” (Aves: Grues) and resolution of the Limpkin–Sungrebe problem. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 43 (2): 515-529.
Hackett, S. J., Kimball, R. T., Reddy, S., Bowie, R. C. K., Braun, E. L., Braun, M. J., Chojnowski, J. L., Cox, W. A., Han, K.-L., Harshman, J., Huddleston, C. J., Marks, B. D., Miglia, K. J., Moore, W. A., Sheldon, F. H., Steadman, D. W., Witt, C. C., and Yuri, T. 2008. A phylogenomic study of birds reveals their evolutionary history. Science 320(5884):1763-1768.
Houde, P., A. Cooper, E. Leslie, A. E. Strand, and G. A. Montano. 1997. Phylogeney and evolution of 12S rDNA in Gruiformes (Aves). In: Mindell, D. P. (ed.), Avian Molecular Evolution and Systematics. Academic Press, San Diego. Pp. 121-158.
Livezey, B. C. 1998 A phylogenetic analysis of the Gruiformes (Aves) based on morphological characters, with an emphasis on rails (Rallidae). Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. Lond. 353: 2077-2151.
Livezey, B. C., and R. L. Zusi. 2007. Higher-order phylogeny of modern birds (Theropoda, Aves: Neornithes) based on comparative anatomy. II. Analysis and discussion. Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 149 (1): 1-95.
Sibley, C. G. and Ahlquist, J. E. 1990. Phylogeny and classification of birds: a study in molecular evolution. Yale University Press, New Haven.
Taylor, B. 1998. Rails: A Guide to the Rails, Crakes, Gallinules and Coots of the World. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Title Illustrations
| Scientific Name | Aramus guarauna |
|---|---|
| Location | Sarasota, Florida, USA |
| Specimen Condition | Live Specimen |
| Source | One leg is a good as a rest |
| Source Collection | Flickr |
| Image Use |
 This media file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License - Version 2.0.
|
| Copyright | © 2005 Simon Bisson |
| Scientific Name | Porphyrio porphyrio |
|---|---|
| Location | Shortland Wetlands, Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia |
| Specimen Condition | Live Specimen |
| Source | Swamphen |
| Source Collection | Flickr |
| Image Use |
This media file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License - Version 2.0.
|
| Copyright | © 2006 Marj Kibby |
| Scientific Name | Balearica pavonina |
|---|---|
| Location | Ngorongoro Crater, Tanzania |
| Specimen Condition | Live Specimen |
| Identified By | David Bygott |
| Life Cycle Stage | Adult |
| View | Lateral |
| Copyright |
© 2005
|
About This Page
Correspondence regarding this page should be directed to John Harshman at
Page copyright © 2008
Page: Tree of Life
Gruiformes. Cranes, Rails, Coots, and allies.
Authored by
John Harshman.
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- First online 14 December 2005
- Content changed 27 June 2008
Citing this page:
Harshman, John. 2008. Gruiformes. Cranes, Rails, Coots, and allies. Version 27 June 2008 (under construction). http://tolweb.org/Gruiformes/26307/2008.06.27 in The Tree of Life Web Project, http://tolweb.org/
