Black-necked stork
| Black-necked stork | |
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| Female with yellow iris | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Ciconiiformes |
| Family: | Ciconiidae |
| Genus: | Ephippiorhynchus |
| Species: | E. asiaticus |
| Binomial name | |
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Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus (Latham, 1790) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Xenorhynchos leucoptera |
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Xenorhynchos leucoptera
Xenorhynchus australis
Xenorhynchus asiaticus
The black-necked stork (Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus) is a tall long-necked wading bird in the stork family. It is a resident species across the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia with a disjunct population in Australia. It lives in wetland habitats and certain crops such as rice and wheat where it forages for a wide range of animal prey. Adult birds of both sexes have a heavy bill and are patterned in white and glossy blacks, but the sexes differ in the colour of the iris. In Australia, it is sometimes called a jabiru although that name refers to a stork species found in the Americas. It is one of the few storks that is strongly territorial when feeding.
First described by John Latham as Mycteria asiatica, this species was later placed in the genus Xenorhynchus based on morphology. Based on behavioural similarities, Kahl suggested the placement of the species in the genus Ephippiorhynchus, which then included a single species, the saddle-billed stork. This placement of both the black-necked stork and saddle-billed stork in the same genus was later supported by osteological and behavioural data, and DNA-DNA hybridisation and cytochrome – b data. The genera Xenorhynchus and Ephippiorhynchus were both erected at the same time, and as first revisor, Kahl selected the latter as the valid genus for the two species. This and the saddle-billed stork Ephippiorhynchus senegalensis are the only stork species that show marked sexual dimorphism in iris colour.
Two subspecies are recognized E. a. asiaticus of the Oriental region and E. a. australis of south New Guinea and Australia.Charles Lucien Bonaparte erected the genus Xenorhynchus in 1855 and placed two species in it, X. indica and X. australis. This treatment was carried on into later works.James Lee Peters in his 1931 work treated them as subspecies. In 1989, McAllan and Bruce again suggested the elevation of the two subspecies into two species: E. asiaticus or the green-necked stork of the Oriental region, and E. australis or the black-necked stork of the Australian and New Guinean region. This recommendation was based on the disjunct distributions and differences in the iridescent colouration of the neck which the authors suggested might reflect different behavioural displays. This recommendation has not been followed and a subsequent study did not find consistent differences in the colours. Analysis of the mitochondrial sequences however showed significant genetic divergence. The genetic distance of a stork presumed to be Ephippiorhynchus asiaticus asiaticus from a confirmed individual of E. a. australis was 2.1%, much greater than the genetic distances between individual storks of the same species. The conservative treatment as two subspecies has been followed in the Australian faunal list by Christidis and Boles.
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