Salvadori's teal
| Salvadori's teal | |
|---|---|
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Anseriformes |
| Family: | Anatidae |
| Genus: |
Salvadorina Rothschild & Hartert, 1894 |
| Species: | S. waigiuensis |
| Binomial name | |
|
Salvadorina waigiuensis Rothschild & Hartert, 1894 |
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The Salvadori's teal or Salvadori's duck (Salvadorina waigiuensis) is a species of bird endemic to New Guinea. It is placed in the monotypic genus Salvadorina.
It has a dark brown head and neck, and its body is barred and spotted dark brown and off white, with orange legs and a yellow bill.
It is a secretive inhabitant of fast-flowing highland streams and lakes. It is an omnivore. It locates its nest near water, and lays 2 to 4 eggs in the dry season. The IUCN has listed the bird as vulnerable, and the total population may be slowly declining.
When Walter Rothschild and Ernst Hartert first described Salvadori's teal in 1894, they placed it in the concurrently created monotypic genus Salvadorina. It has no subspecies. Initially, it was generally placed with South America's torrent duck and New Zealand's blue duck — two species of similar ecological niches — in a tribe called Merganettini. In the 1940s, Ernst Mayr moved the species to the dabbling duck genus Anas, based on several anatomical features. It was then reinstated in its own genus and moved to the shelduck subfamily Tadorninae, which also contains the torrent duck and blue duck which convergently have evolved adaptations to mountain stream habitat. All or some of these species may actually be surviving lineages of an ancient Gondwanan radiation of waterfowl (Sraml et al. 1996).
The duck's common and genus names both commemorate 18th-century Italian ornithologist Tommaso Salvadori. The species name waigiuensis refers to Waigeo (also known as Waigiu), an island near New Guinea.
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