Silver pheasant
| Silver pheasant | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Galliformes |
| Family: | Phasianidae |
| Subfamily: | Phasianinae |
| Genus: | Lophura |
| Species: | L. nycthemera |
| Binomial name | |
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Lophura nycthemera (Linnaeus, 1758) |
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The silver pheasant (Lophura nycthemera) is a species of pheasant found in forests, mainly in mountains, of mainland Southeast Asia, and eastern and southern China, with introduced populations in Hawaii and various locations in the US mainland. The male is black and white, while the female is mainly brown. Both sexes have a bare red face and red legs (the latter separating it from the greyish-legged kalij pheasant). It is common in aviculture, and overall also remains common in the wild, but some of its subspecies (notably whiteheadi from Hainan, engelbachi from southern Laos, and annamensis from southern Vietnam) are rare and threatened.
Like other pheasants, the silver pheasant was placed in the genus Phasianus when described by Linnaeus in 1758. Since then it – or at least some of the subspecies associated with it – have been placed either in Euplocamus or Gennceus. Today all major authorities place the silver pheasant in Lophura.
The silver pheasant is closely related to the kalij pheasant and the two are known to hybridize. The placement of the taxa lineata and crawfurdi has been a matter of dispute, with some treating them as subspecies of the kalij pheasant and others as subspecies of the silver pheasant. They have greyish legs as in the kalij pheasant, but their plumage is closer to that of some subspecies of the silver pheasant. Additionally, as the silver pheasant, lineata and crawfurdi are found east of the Irrawaddy River, a major zoogeographic barrier, while all other subspecies of the kalij pheasant are found west of the river (oatesi, a subspecies of the kalij pheasant, has sometimes been reported as occurring east of that river, but this is incorrect). Based on mtDNA, it was recently confirmed that lineata and crawfurdi should be regarded as subspecies of the kalij pheasant.
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Wikipedia