Turnicidae

Small buttonquail Turnix sylvaticus adult and chick, photographed by Udayan Rao Pawar.

Belongs within: Charadriiformes.

The Turnicidae, buttonquails, are a group of plump-bodied terrestrial birds found in tropical and subtropical regions of the Old World. Buttonquails closely resemble true quails but are not closely related and differ in the absence of a hind toe. They are divided between two genera with the quail-plover Ortyxelos meiffrenii of northern tropical Africa having proportionately longer wings than species of the genus Turnix.

<==Turnicidae [Hemipodiidae, Ortygidae, Turnices, Turnicinae]
    |--Ortyxelos Vieillot 1825 [Ortyxelidae] L98
    |    `--O. meiffrenii JT12
    `--Turnix Bonnaterre 1791 L98 [incl. Hemipodius Temminck 1815 B94, Ortygis Illiger 1811 B94]
         |  i. s.: ‘Hemipodius’ andalusicus S66
         |         T. castanotus (Gould 1839) JT12, WS48 (see below for synonymy)
         |         T. everetti JT12
         |         T. maculosus (Temminck 1815) JT12, WS48 [=Hemipodius maculosus WS48]
         |           |--T. m. maculosiu WS48
         |           `--T. m. pseustes Mathews 1912 WS48
         |         T. melanogaster JT12
         |         T. nigricollis JT12
         |         T. ocellatus JT12
         |         T. olivii JT12
         |         T. velox (Gould 1841) (see below for synonymy) WS48
         |         T. worcesteri JT12
         |--+--T. suscitator JT12
         |  `--T. tanki JT12
         `--+--T. sylvaticus BKB15
            |    |--T. s. sylvaticus RN72
            |    `--T. s. lepurana RN72
            `--+--T. pyrrhothorax (Gould 1841) BKB15, WS48 (see below for synonymy)
               `--+--T. hottentottus BKB15
                  `--T. varius (Latham 1802) BKB15, CC10 [=Perdix varia CC10, T. varia CC10]
                       |--T. v. varius [incl. T. varia stirlingi Mathews 1912] WS48
                       |--T. v. novaecaledoniae S13
                       `--T. v. scintillans (Gould 1845) [=Hemipodius scintillans] WS48

Turnix castanotus (Gould 1839) JT12, WS48 [=Hemipodius castanotus WS48; incl. T. castanota magnifica Mathews 1912 WS48]

Turnix pyrrhothorax (Gould 1841) BKB15, WS48 [=Hemipodius pyrrhothorax WS48; incl. T. pyrrhothorax berneyi Mathews 1912 WS48]

Turnix velox (Gould 1841) [=Hemipodius velox; incl. T. velox picturata Mathews 1912, T. velox vinotincta Mathews 1912] WS48

*Type species of generic name indicated

REFERENCES

[B94] Bock, W. J. 1994. History and nomenclature of avian family-group names. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 222: 1–281.

[BKB15] Burleigh, J. G., R. T. Kimball & E. L. Braun. 2015. Building the avian tree of life using a large-scale, sparse supermatrix. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 84: 53–63.

[CC10] Checklist Committee (OSNZ). 2010. Checklist of the Birds of New Zealand, Norfolk and Macquarie Islands, and the Ross Dependency, Antarctica 4^th ed. Ornithological Society of New Zealand and Te Papa Press: Wellington.

[JT12] Jetz, W., G. H. Thomas, J. B. Joy, K. Hartmann & A. Ø. Mooers. 2012. The global diversity of birds in space and time. Nature 491: 444–448.

[L98] Livezey, B. C. 1998. A phylogenetic analysis of the Gruiformes (Aves) based on morphological characters, with an emphasis on the rails (Rallidae). Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London Series B—Biological Sciences 353: 2077–2151.

[RN72] Rutgers, A., & K. A. Norris (eds) 1972. Encyclopaedia of Aviculture vol. 1. London, Blandford Press.

[S13] Sarasin, F. 1913. Die Vögel Neu-Caledoniens und der Loyalty-Inseln. In: Sarasin, F., & J. Roux (eds) Nova Caledonia: Forschungen in Neu-Caledonian und auf den Loyalty-Inseln. A. Zoologie vol. 1 pt 1 pp. 1–78, pls 1–3. C. W. Kreidels Verlag: Wiesbaden.

[S66] Sclater, P. L. 1866. Report on birds collected at Windvogelberg, South Africa, by Capt. G. E. Bulger, C. M. Z. S. Proceedings of the Zoological Society of London 1866: 21–23.

[WS48] Whittell, H. M., & D. L. Serventy. 1948. A systematic list of the birds of Western Australia. Public Library, Museum and Art Gallery of Western Australia, Special Publication 1: 1–126.

Last updated: 15 August 2019.