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a-dinosaur-a-day · 6 years

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Crypturellus

Tataupa Tinamou, by Dario Sanches, CC BY-SA 2.0

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Name: Crypturellus

Status: Extant

First Described: 1914

Described By: Brabourne & Chubb

Classification: Dinosauria, Theropoda, Neotheropoda, Averostra, Tetanurae, Orionides, Avetheropoda, Coelurosauria, Tyrannoraptora, Maniraptoriformes, Maniraptora, Pennaraptora, Paraves, Eumaniraptora, Averaptora, Avialae, Euavialae, Avebrevicauda, Pygostylia, Ornithothoraces, Euornithes, Ornithuromorpha, Ornithurae, Neornithes, Palaeognathae, Notopalaeognathae, Tinamiformes + Dinornithiformes Clade, Tinamiformes, Tinamidae, Tinaminae

Referred Species: C. atrocapillus (Black-Capped Tinamou, extant), C. bartletti (Bartlett’s Tinamou, extant), C. berlepschi (Berlepsch’ Tinamou, extant), C. boucardi (Slaty-breasted Tinamou, extant), C. brevirostris (Rusty Tinamou, extant), C. casiquiare (Barred Tinamou, extant), C. cinereus (Cinereous Tinamou, extant), C. cinnamomeus (Thicket Tinamou, extant), C. duidae (Grey-Legged Tinamou, extant), C. erythropus (Red-legged Tinamou, extant), C. kerriae (Choco Tinamou, extant), C. noctivagus (Yellow-legged Tinamou, extant), C. obsoletus (Brown Tinamou, extant), C. parvirostris (Small-billed Tinamou, extant), C. ptaritepui (Tepui Tinamou, extant), C. soui (Little Tinamou, extant), C. strigulosus (Brazilian Tinamou, extant), C. tataupa (Tataupa Tinamou, extant), C. transfasciatus (Pale-browed Tinamou), C. undulatus (Undulated Tinamou, extant), C. verigatus (Verigated Tinamou, extant), C. reai (extinct)

Here we go! Our first extant genus of Tinamou! Crypturellus, which is mostly a forest-dwelling type of tinamou (though some species live in the steppe and grasslands). Today, they live throughout Uruguay to Mexico. This genus is extremely specious, with 21 extant species and 1 extinct species.

By Jack Wood on @thewoodparable

The one extinct species, C. reai, is from the Santa Cruz Formation of Argentina, living about 17.5 to 16.3 million years ago, in the Burdigalian age of the Miocene of the Neogene. It is only known from a humerus, but it indicates this genus evolved quite a while ago and was present in a higher latitude than today. This indicates that tropical climates were present in Patagonia during the Miocene, since that is the primary habitat preference of tinamou in this genus. It is also one of the earliest tinamou fossils known, which indicates that tinamou appeared quite early on looking essentially the same as today, and their ghost lineage from other palaeognaths remains a mystery. It was most similar to the modern Pale-browed tinamou in shape, except for having differently arranged muscles.

Pale-Browed Tinamou by Tony Castro, CC BY-SA 4.0

Modern species of Crypturellus are very loud birds, with males and females having different calls, and in some cases - like with the Slaty-Breasted Tinamou - the calls are so unique per bird that individuals can be recognized based on the calls. Other tinamous can be grouped together based on the similarity of their calls - the Undulated, Red-Legged, and Yellow-Legged Tinamou all make similar calls, while the Brown Tinamou, Small-Billed Tinamou, and Tataupa Tinamou all make similar calls. They like to eat fruit in their forested environment, but also will feed upon insects, which they often leap as high as 1 meter to grab. This genus mates by the male lowering his breast to the ground and then raising his neck vertically, making him look larger to impress females. The females will lay clutches of 2 eggs, with multiple females contributing to a nest until it reaches sizes of up to 16 eggs. Males that mated with all these females will then incubate and care for the young for 16 days. The chicks are very precocial and run around often like the chicks of rails, and gain maturity at 20 days.

Bartlett’s Tinamou, from the British Museum, in the Public Domain

As stated, there are many species of tinamou, so time to go through them in alphabetical order (by species)! The Black-Capped Tinamou is from tropical lowlands in Peru and Bolivia, and has even extended to Brazil. It is black, brown, and grey, with its legs red. It behaves much like the other members of its genus, living in low lying bushes and feeding off of fruits, flowers, leaves, seeds, roots, and insects. Sadly, it is near-threatened. Bartlett’s Tinamou, above, is not endangered, and is found in subtropical and tropical forests in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, and Ecuador, and its mostly brown with some black spots. It’s also about 27 centimeters long.

Berlepsch’s Tinamou by John Gerrard Keulemans, in the Public Domain

Berlepsch’s Tinamou is from Columbia and Ecuador, and though it has a very limited range in tropical habitats, it doesn’t appear to be threatened ecologically. It’s about 29.6 to 32 centimeters in length, with the females slightly heavier than the males. They’re usually a very dark brown, and though they can fly they rarely do, picking off fruit from low hanging branches.

Slaty-Breasted Tinamou by Exotic Ornithology, in the Public Domain

The Slaty-Breasted Tinamou is from Mexico and Central America, in lowland evergreen forests with thick undergrowth for it to hide in. It’s about 27 centimeters in length and very shy and difficult to spot, though it has a three note low call that’ll make for up to five hours at a time. The Rusty Tinamou, conversely, is mainly in tropical and swamp forests in South America, and though it isn’t threatened its habitat means it’s very difficult to spot this bird. The Barred Tinamou also lives in Colombia and Venezuela in tropical forests, and is smaller than other tinamous, only about 25 centimeters long, and also has yellowish feathers.

Cinereous Tinamou by Manuel Anastácio, CC BY-SA 2.5

The Cinereous Tinamou is from swamp and lowland forests in Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, Suriname, Guyana, French Guiana, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia, mainly in the Amazon rainforest. They will sometimes venture out into the savanna and feed in coffee and cocoa plantations. They greatly supplement their fruity diet with insects such as ants and mole-crickets, and they eat a lot of seeds and berries in the winter. They don’t really make nests but just kind of lay their eggs in a giant pile of leaves on the floor. They also have a very loud whistle that they make at dawn and dusk.

Thicket Tinamou by Exotic Ornithology, in the Public Domain

The Thicket Tinamou is a reddish tinamou from Mexico, which isn’t endangered and very common. At 27 to 29 centimeters long, it’s fairly average in size. It makes a whoo-oo call and the tinamou are often found in pairs and families in various kinds of tropical and subtropical forests in the lowlands. It also lives in Costa Rica and lives very close to the United States. It’ll nest in raised roosts and eats a variety of fruits, seeds, and invertebrates.

Grey-Legged Tinamou by José Alvarez Alonso, CC BY 2.0

The Grey-Legged Tinamou is near threatened and from Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, though it may extend as far as Peru. It’s about 30 centimeters long, making it fairly large for this genus. They have a slightly varied diet and lives in drier lowland forests and dry scrubland, which it blends in with with its brown plumage.

Red-Legged Tinamou by the British Museum, in the Public Domain

The Red-Legged Tinamou looks a lot like quail even though it’s not, it’s a tinamou. It can be anywhere between 27 and 32 centimeters in length, making it both small and big for this genus. It has a whistling call and it has pinkish eggs which I just find neat. They live in Guyana, Suriname, Colombia, Venezuela, and Brazil, and it might extend into French Guiana. It preferably lives in dry forests, though it does venture into wet forests, shrubland, and grassland. The Choco Tinamou (no image) is a very rare and vulnerable tinamou, quite small (about 25 to 26 centimeters in length), and it’s very dark as well. It has a sad sounding three note whistle. Being from tropical and subtropical moist forests, its habitats are being destructed by human activity and as such it is vulnerable to extinction. There are, however, efforts to conserve its habitat ongoing.

Yellow-Legged Tinamou by Marcos Massarioli, CCY BY 2.0

The Yellow-Legged Tinamou is near threatened and found in shrublands and woods in Brazil. It has grey-brown plumage and is about 28 to 31 centimeters long. It eats a lot of leaves, roots, and invertebrates in addition to fruit. Unfortunately, habitat destruction is to blame for its population loss.

Brown Tinamou, by the British Museum, in the Public Domain

The Brown Tinamou lives in Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Uruguay, giving it one of the southernmost ranges of any living member of the genus. It lives in lowland and mountain forests, preferring high elevations. It is also very shy, making it hard to spot. It lives alone or in pairs, and is about 25 to 30 centimeters long on average.

Small-Billed Tinamou by Dario Sanches, CC BY-SA 2.0

The Small-Billed Tinamou is known from Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, Paraguay, and Argentina, living in dry savanna and shrubland. It has a tiny, red bill and is about 22 centimeters in length, making it small in general - allowing it to hide easier in bushes and against the dry ground. The Tepui Tinamou is also a open-habitat-dwelling bird, known from only Venezeulan shrubland and mountain forests. Thus they live in higher altitudes. They’re about 27 centimters in length and eat lots of roots, leaves, seeds, flowers, and invertebrates in addition to fruit.

Little Tinamou, by Gary L. Clark, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Little Tinamou is about 22 centimeters long and very shy, making it quite adorable in my opinion. It’s rarely seen and lives in dark, dense forests across Central and South America. It’s also solitary, making spotting one even harder, and it’s very brown with a black head. It lives in lowland tropical forests and some shrubland, and they also will live in farmland successfully.

Brazilian Tinamou by Marcos Massarioli, CC BY 2.0

The Brazilian Tinamou lives in lowland forests that are primarily tropical and moist, and it lives in Bolivia, Brazil and Peru. They’re about 28 centimeters in length and are very common and not threatened ecologically.

Tataupa Tinamou, by Marcos Massarioli, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Tataupa Tinamou is about 25 centimeters in length and mainly dark greyish brown, with a bright red bill and reddish legs. They prefer dry forests and live in Brazil, Bolivia, Argentina, Paraguay, Peru, and even Ecuador.

Pale-Browed Tinamou by the Zoological Society of London, in the Public Domain

The Pale-Browed Tinamou is a near-threatened species from Peruvian and Ecuadorian arid forests. About 28 centimters long, it has striping along its feathers and pinkish to yellowish legs. Due to deforestation, its population is decreasing.

Undulated Tinamou by Marcos Massarioli, CC BY-SA 3.0

The Undulated Tinamou lives in wooded habitats of the Amazon Basin, and they’re also very shy, though they have a distinctive call that sounds like com-pra-pan, the Spanish phrase for “buy bread”. It’s about 28 to 30 centimeters in length and it is in general brownish grey and with black bars on its body and neck. It prefers drier habitats when possible.

Variegated Tinamou, by Luciana Costa, CC BY-SA 3.0

Our last species, the Veriegated Tinamou is from wet lowland forests with dense undergrowth across Colombia, Venezuela, French Guiana, Suriname, Guyana, Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Bolivia. It’s about 29.5 to 33 centimeters in length, making it fairly large, and it has striped feathers along its back. It’s throat is also white as are its butt feathers. They make five uniform notes for their call, sometimes trilling before descending in pitch. Luckily, it isn’t vulnerable for extinction.

Sources:

Chandler, R. M. 2012. A new species of Tinamou (Aves: Tinamiformes, Tinamidae) from the Early-Middle Miocene of Argentina. PalArch’s Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology 9(2): 1 - 8.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crypturellus

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-capped_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartlett%27s_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlepsch%27s_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slaty-breasted_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rusty_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barred_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinereous_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thicket_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey-legged_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-legged_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choco_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow-legged_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small-billed_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tepui_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tataupa_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pale-browed_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undulated_tinamou

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variegated_tinamou

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djgblogger-blog · 7 years

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How we discovered the vampire bats that have learned to drink human blood

http://bit.ly/2vQSXSr

Doesn't look like much of a threat, does he? Gerry Carter/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

What’s for dinner? For some Brazilian vampire bats, these days it’s human blood.

That’s the surprising outcome of my research, recently published in the Acta Chiropterologica journal, which revealed that the hairy-legged vampire bat of Pernambuco, Brazil, has developed an appetite for human blood over that of other possible prey.

This finding upends all the existing scientific literature on this bat species, which typically feeds on bird blood.

A little-known bat (with a secret)

The hairy-legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata) is the least-studied of the three species of known vampire bats. In 20 years working as a zoologist, I had never held a live specimen in my hands.

But there I was in Pernambuco’s drylands in 2013, inside a cave in the Catimbau National Park, when I focused the flashlight on a little colony of bats above my head and spotted a few Diphylla.

Though not the prettiest species of bat, they are more delicate than some, with a gentle face, small ears and, I must say, a soft look.

On the ground below the bats, I saw pools of guano, or bat droppings, each the size of a soup dish. Vampire bats are hematophagous, meaning they can only eat blood, so their excrement is tinged red.

View of Catimbau National Park, where some bats are starting to change their feeding habits. Enrico Bernard/UFPE, Author provided

Diphylla prey on bird blood, but in Catimbau Park, native birds of medium and large size have become locally extinct. Probably due to unregulated hunting, the white-browed guan, the yellow-legged tinamou, and the picazuro pigeon — all potential prey for Diphylla in the past — were no longer observed there by 2013.

So what were those Diphylla feeding on, if not birds? Goat blood might make sense. I had seen many grazing in the park, raised by the hundreds of families who still live in Catimbau, despite its legal status as a natural protection zone.

I returned to the Federal University of Pernambuco in Recife, determined to investigate Diphylla’_s_ diet.

The scientific method

Extracting DNA from vampire-bat guano is no small feat. Proteins in their digestive tracts can break down the DNA of the blood consumed, and samples collected in caves can be contaminated with exogenous DNA, either from other organisms in the guano (such as bacteria, fungi and insects) or by the sample collector.

For this task I joined forces with Fernanda Ito, then an UFPE student working toward her undergraduate honours thesis. She liked the idea of using fecal DNA to figure out the bats’ prey as her thesis project. Later our team welcomed Rodrigo Torres, from UFPE’s Department of Zoology, who works with genetics applied to biodiversity conservation.

If all went well, the sequences we obtained would be compared to those deposited in GenBank, indicating the possible prey Diphylla were feeding on.

The process of extracting and purifying the DNA was as long and dramatic as a Brazilian soap opera. For days, Fernanda persistently tested and modified protocols at various temperatures and lengths of time, until finding the right combination that would allow the perfect reaction to happen.

Finally, when Fernanda was on the verge of quitting in frustration, she managed to sequence the samples. When we compared our bat DNA sequences with those obtained from goats, pigs, cows, dogs, chickens and humans, we found that Diphylla had consumed blood from chickens and humans.

Researcher installing monitoring equipment in a cave in Brazil’s Catimbau National Park. Eder Barbier, Author provided

At least three samples obtained on different dates pointed to the consumption of human blood. The other 12 of our 15 samples found evidence of Diphylla sucking chickens’ blood.

This was an intriguing finding. Science suggests that Diphylla would never consume human blood. Indeed, three articles (from Mexico in 1966 and 1981 and from Brazil in 1994) even indicated that in captivity, Diphylla would rather starve to death than feed on blood from cows, rats, rabbits, pigs or live goats.

Groundbreaking data

Our data was contrary to all the information available on Diphylla so far. In fact, we had seen reports that indicated that this species actually has a physiological intolerance of mammalian blood, which has more dry matter, mainly proteins, than bird blood (which contains more water and fat).

Diphylla ecaudata. Eder Barbier, Author provided

That would explain why the bats weren’t going after the goats, as I had originally thought. But how to explain the strange preference for human blood?

It seems the scarcity of native large bird species in the park has led Diphylla to develop a more flexible diet than scientists could have imagined. That may be good for Diphylla’s survival, but it’s also an indicator that the area we studied is not faring well. In northeastern Brazil’s dry forests, native species are disappearing, presumably forcing other species, too, to change their diet and behaviour.

The presence of human blood in bat guano also raises public health issues. Clearly, some people in the Catimbau region are being bitten by bats, raising the risk that rabies and other diseases could be transmitted.

On the positive side, Fernanda defended her thesis with success and our article in Acta Chiropterologica is attracting media coverage worldwide.

Discovering that bats can learn to live on human blood has given me several new ideas to explore, such as radio-tracking them to find their human prey.

New research will start soon. Now, I just have to find a new Fernanda …

Enrico Bernard receives funding from Brazilian CNPq and FACEPE.

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