Anas

Anas
Female mallard (Anas platyrhynchos) with brood of young
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Anseriformes
Family:	Anatidae
Subfamily:	Anatinae
Genus:	Anas Linnaeus, 1758
Type species
Anas platyrhynchos Linnaeus, 1758
Species
40–50, see text

40–50, see text

Anas is a genus of dabbling ducks. The genus name is the Latin for "duck". It includes mallards, wigeons, , and shovelers in a number of subgenera. Some authorities prefer to elevate the subgenera to genus rank. Indeed, as the moa-nalos are very close to this clade and may have evolved later than some of these lineages, it is rather the absence of a thorough review than lack of necessity that this genus is rather over-lumped. However, there are 42 species verified by ITIS, and the IUCN recognizes 46 species.

The phylogeny of this genus is one of the most confounded ones of all living birds. Research is hampered by the fact the radiation of the two major groups of Anas – the teals and mallard groups – took place in a very short time and fairly recently, roughly in the mid-late . Furthermore, hybridization may have long played a major role in Anas evolution, with within-subgenus hybrids regularly and between-subgenus hybrids not infrequently being fully fertile. The relationships between species are much obscured by this fact, and mtDNA sequence data is of dubious value in resolving their relationships; on the other hand, nuclear DNA sequences evolve too slowly to resolve the phylogeny of the subgenus Anas for example.

Some major clades can be discerned. For example, that the traditional subgenus Anas, the mallard group, forms a monophyletic (in the loose sense, i.e. non-holophyletic) group has never been seriously questioned by modern science and is as good as confirmed (but see below). On the other hand, the phylogeny of the teals is very confusing.

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Wikipedia