Bronze-tailed peacock-pheasant
| Bronze-tailed peacock-pheasant | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Galliformes |
| Family: | Phasianidae |
| Subfamily: | Argusianinae |
| Genus: | Polyplectron |
| Species: | P. chalcurum |
| Binomial name | |
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Polyplectron chalcurum Lesson, 1831 |
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| Subspecies | |
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| Synonyms | |
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Chalcurus chalcurus |
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Chalcurus chalcurus
The bronze-tailed peacock-pheasant (Polyplectron chalcurum) is also known as the Sumatran peacock-pheasant. It is an Indonesian bird.
The bronze-tailed peacock-pheasant is a small, up to 56 cm long, dark brown pheasant with dark grey legs, rather small head and long, narrow tail of sixteen feathers. The tail feathers are chestnut brown with metallic purplish bars near tips. Both sexes are similar. The male has longer tail, two spurs on legs and yellow iris while the unspurred female's is dark brown.
The bronze-tailed peacock-pheasant belongs to the family Phasianidae and the genus Polyplectron, which consists of seven peacock-pheasant species. There are two subspecies:
mtDNA and D-loop as well as the nuclear ovomucoid intron G data confirms that this species belongs to a clade together with the mountain peacock-pheasant, but also the mainland species Germain's peacock-pheasant and grey peacock-pheasant (Kimball et al. 2001).
The molecular data suggests - though not with high confidence - that this species diverged relatively recently from ancestral grey peacock-pheasants. This is quite spurious, since biogeography, its peculiarly derived plumage, and the fact that it is an insular mountain endemic indicate it is derived from a comparatively small founder population; this would confound molecular analyses. What seems clear is that the present species evolved from mainland Southeast Asian stock, probably during the Late Pliocene to (3.6-1 mya). The loss of ocelli thus is, contrary to long-held opinion, an autapomorphy, and the southern species of this clade - formerly separated in the genus Chalcurus - are probably not each other's closest relatives.
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Wikipedia