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Steamer duck

Genus of birds

Summary

Genus of birds

Tachyeres patachonicus

Tachyeres pteneres

Tachyeres brachypterus

Tachyeres leucocephalus

Micropterus Lesson 1828 non Lacépède 1802
Microa Strand 1943

The steamer ducks are a genus (Tachyeres) of ducks in the family Anatidae. Three of the four species occur in the southern part of the Southern Cone of South America in Chile and Argentina, and the fourth on the Falkland Islands 500 km to the east; all except the flying steamer duck are flightless, and even this one species capable of flight only rarely takes to the air. They can be aggressive and are capable of chasing off predators like petrels. Bloody battles of steamer ducks with each other over territory disputes are observed in nature. They even kill waterbirds that are several times their size.

Taxonomy

The genus Tachyeres was introduced in 1875 by the English zoologist Richard Owen to accommodate the Falkland steamer duck. The genus name Tachyeres, "having fast oars" or "fast rower", comes from Ancient Greek ταχυ- "fast" + ἐρέσσω "I row (as with oars)". The common name "steamer ducks" arose because, when swimming fast, they flap their wings into the water as well as using their feet, creating an effect like a paddle steamer.

They were usually placed in the shelduck subfamily Tadorninae. However, mtDNA sequence analyses of the cytochrome b, NADH dehydrogenase subunit 2, and other genes indicate that Tachyeres instead belongs in a distinct clade of aberrant South American dabbling ducks, which also includes the Brazilian teal Amazonetta brasiliensis, the crested duck Lophonetta specularioides, and the bronze-winged duck Speculanas specularis.

Extant species

There are four species:

Phylogeny

Genetic evidence suggests the species form two sister groups:

Evolution

Flightlessness

Flightless Tachyeres may be paraphyletic, as shown above. There are multiple possible explanations of this. It is unlikely that flightlessness evolved once in all Tachyeres and then disappeared in T. patachonicus, because there is no evidence for a reversal of evolution, and these reversals are extremely rare. It is more likely that flightlessness evolved independently in each steamer duck species. The DYRK1A enzyme has been identified as a candidate gene for flightlessness in steamer ducks. This finding, combined with the range of flight capability, means the evolutionary history of the group may not be so clear cut.

There is genomic evidence of recent speciation into the four Tachyeres species. Flightless Tachyeres are thought to be undergoing a modern evolutionary transition to flightlessness, which explains the range of flight capability observed across the genus. The largest males of the most volant species, the flying steamer duck, are completely incapable of flight, while other individuals rarely fly. The flying steamer duck is the only species to reside in landlocked bodies of water. Generally, island bound/isolated avian populations are more likely to experience evolution towards flightlessness, which may be the case for several Tachyeres populations in the coastal South American regions.

References

"Part 7- Vertebrates".
Livezey, Bradley C.. (1992). "Taxonomy and Identification of Steamer Ducks (Anatidae: ''Tachyeres'')". Museum of Natural History, University of Kansas.
Campagna, Leonardo. (September 2019). "Gradual evolution towards flightlessness in steamer ducks*". Evolution.
Livezey, Bradley. (1986). "Flightlessness in steamer-ducks (Anatidae: tachyeres): its morphological bases and probable evolution". Evolution.
"8 Birds That Can't Fly".
Owen, Richard. (1875). "On Dinornis (Part XX.) : containing a restoration of the skeleton of ''Cnemiornis calcitrans'', Ow., with remarks on its affinities in the Lamellirostral group". Transactions of the Zoological Society of London.
(2005). "Ducks, Geese and Swans". Oxford University Press.
Moynihan, M.. (April 1958). "Notes on the Behavior of the Flying Steamer Duck". [[The Auk]].
Johnson, Kevin P.. (1999). "Phylogeny and biogeography of dabbling ducks (genus ''Anas''): a comparison of molecular and morphological evidence". [[Auk (journal).
(2010). "Phylogenetic relationships of Amazonetta , Speculanas , Lophonetta , and Tachyeres : four morphologically divergent duck genera endemic to South America". Journal of Avian Biology.
(2018). "Mitogenomics supports an unexpected taxonomic relationship for the extinct diving duck Chendytes lawi and definitively places the extinct Labrador Duck". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution.
Wright, Natalie. (2016). "Predictable evolution toward flightlessness in volant island birds". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

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