Procellariiformes

Cap shearwaters ( Puffinus gravis )

• Petrels ( Procellariidae )
• Diving petrels ( Pelecanoididae )
• Albatrosses ( Diomedeidae )
• Petrels ( Hydrobatidae )

The Procellariiformes ( Procellariiformes ) are an order usually langflügliger, kurzschwänziger seabirds. You are outspoken deep sea birds, which mostly go to the land only to breed. Its distribution includes all the seas and oceans all climates. Known representatives of Procellariiformes, the albatrosses and petrels.

Features

Named the Procellariiformes are according to their peculiar beak, which is composed of several narrow, longitudinal horn pieces. In its beak sitting on two tubes which serve to excrete the salt from the sea water intake for drinking. In addition, some Procellariiformes can answer splash out of this device, an attacker a secreted oily liquid meter wide.

Typical of Procellariiformes is also that, for them, both the neck and the tail and the legs are short. The three front toes are connected by webbing. Many of those forming part of the Procellariiformes species also have long, narrow wings. Among the best known species is one of the wandering albatross has the largest wingspan of all birds with a wingspan of over three meters.

Procellariiformes are distinguished adapted to long, persistent flies. You are able to overcome very long distances and survive strong storms. Large species such as the albatross sailing mainly drawing also on the thermals above the waves. The also counted among the Procellariiformes petrels fly against it alternately in a flutter and glide.

Behavior

All Procellariiformes tend more or less to form colonies. In some species such as the Northern Giant Petrel, there are only loose associations fewer breeding pairs that breed close together. But many others to form large massive colonies that can each comprise over two million pairs, for example, the cap shearwaters. The colonies are usually found on rock islands or cliffs where the nests are safe from predatory mammals; that such places are not in abundance available, like the evolutionary development of Koloniebrütens have favored.

Above all, the great representatives as albatrosses and giant petrels nest on an exposed place, while many smaller species transitions dig into the ground. This egg and bird are warmed, the egg does not in danger of rolling away, and above all, takes the threat of an attack by skuas or other enemies from. In building nesting Procellariiformes are almost always nocturnal, diurnal nesting open with few exceptions.

A complex courtship ritual known of the albatrosses, while the courtship in the other families usually very spectacular expires and is limited in the nocturnal species entirely on vocalizations and no visible gestures includes. Usually there is a brood per year, with the few tropical species also breeds more; many albatrosses breed only every two years. Procellariiformes are monogamous, so try to perform a pairing with the partner of the previous brood. Also, the nesting is preferred, the same as last year. However, some couples lose their preferred nesting sites on rivals, which can lead to fights. In these it is possible that a weaker bird is pushed to the edge of the colony or that a bird nesting in a really Building Type is lack of space forced to lay its egg in the open.

All Procellariiformes lay only one egg. The young bird hatching already wearing a dress and is down to a certain degree mobile, but grows extremely slowly. Until a young nose tube leaves the nest, it may take two to nine months. In the first phase of the raising of one of the parent bird is permanently in the young and holds it at or close to his body. Reaches a certain size it, looking both parents simultaneously birds for food for herself and her cub. Feeding goes for all types vonstatten by the adult bird has the boy at right angles beak; then he chokes out the food that is absorbed by the young bird. The diet consists mainly of fish, cephalopods and crustaceans. Young birds are often fed a nutrient-rich stomach oil that can be retained by the digestion of food in the stomach of the parent animals and carried for a long time.

Fossil history

The oldest fossil organism that is sometimes found in the vicinity of the Procellariiformes, is Tytthostonyx glauconiticus from the Late Cretaceous; This is only known by a humerus, which also has similarities to the Ruderfüßern. The fact that this sparse Fund heard an early representative of the Procellariiformes, is even more unlikely by the molecular clock that determines the probable origin of the Procellariiformes in the Eocene.

The earliest safe determinable representatives of Procellariiformes are known from the Oligocene. The genera Rupelornis and Diomedeoides might have been early albatrosses, but rather like animals their own family Diomedeoididae.

Representative of the real albatrosses, the storm petrels and shearwaters are occupied since the Miocene. These include the extinct Albatrosgattung Plotornis and representatives of the extant genera Diomedea, Oceanodroma and Fulmarus. The diving petrels dive fossil first time in the Pliocene.

System

Outer systematics

Seem to have a remote resemblance to seagulls that Procellariiformes for the layman, has nothing to do with their family relationships. Is already based on morphological analyzes, the results suggest that, instead, go back to the penguins and Procellariiformes from a common ancestor; in both there are webbed, two consecutive down dresses, two carotid arteries as well as a similar construction of the nasal bone and the palate. The presumed relationship was reaffirmed in 1990 DNA analysis. After these investigations form Procellariiformes with penguins and loons a monophyletic taxon.

Inside systematics

There are four families:

• Petrels ( Procellariidae )
• Diving petrels ( Pelecanoididae )
• Albatrosses ( Diomedeidae )
• Petrels ( Hydrobatidae )

Petrels and diving petrels here are most closely related to each other. It has sometimes been doubted whether the diving petrels earn the rank of a family, because the shearwaters in relation might be paraphyletic on it. This conjecture was disproved in DNA analysis by Nunn and Stanley; they also showed that not, as previously thought, the albatrosses, petrels but the basal taxon of the Procellariiformes and are also paraphyletic.

From the studies, the following cladogram in which logically do not arise petrels results, but rather their monophyletic subfamilies Oceanitinae and Hydrobatinae:

Oceanitinae ( Southern petrels )

Hydrobatinae ( Northern petrels )

Diomedeidae ( albatrosses )

Procellariidae ( petrels )

Pelecanoididae (diving petrels )