PROCELLARIIFORMES

'Procellariiformes' (from the Latin ''procella'', a storm) is an order of birds formerly called 'Tubinares' and still called 'tubenoses' in English.

Contents

Description

Species

References

Description

They are all highly pelagic seabirds (feeding in the open ocean), and all of them have their nostrils enclosed in one or two tubes on their straight, deeply grooved bills with hooked tips. The beaks are made up from several plates. Wings are long and narrow; feet are webbed, and the hind toe is undeveloped or non-existent. Plumage is predominantly black or gray.
The tubes may be used to smell or to excrete salt when these birds drink salt water.
The longer-winged species fly using a switchback technique to minimise active flapping. All eat fish, squid or similar marine prey.
Most are almost unable to walk on land, and many species visit their remote breeding islands only at night. The exceptions are the huge albatrosses, several of the gadfly petrels and shearwaters and the fulmar-petrels. The latter can disable even large predatory birds with their obnoxious stomach oil, which they can project some distance. This stomach oil is a digestive residue created in the foregut of all tubenoses except the diving petrels, and is used mainly for storage of energy rich food as well as for defence.

Species

There are a total of roughly 95 species of Procellariiformes world-wide, divided among four families:

★ Order Procellariiformes

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★ Family Procellariidae (shearwaters, fulmarine petrels, gadfly petrels, and prions)

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★ Family Diomedeidae (albatrosses)

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★ Family Hydrobatidae (storm-petrels)

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★ Family Pelecanoididae (diving petrels)
The Hydrobatidae's two subfamilies, Oceanitinadae and Hydrobatinae, are probably better treated as distinct families (Nunn & Stanley 1998).
Procellariiformes are most closely related to Sphenisciformes (Penguins).
In the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, the tubenoses are included in a greatly enlarged order ''Ciconiiformes''. This taxonomic treatment is almost certainly erroneous, but the assumption of a close evolutionary relationship may be correct.
At one point (until the beginning of the 20th century), the family ''Hydrobatidae'' was named ''Procellariidae'', and the family now called ''Procellariidae'' was rendered ''"Puffinidae." '' The order itself was called ''Tubinares''. A major early work on this group is F. DuCane Godman's ''Monograph of the Petrels'', five fascicles, 1907--1910., with portraits of figures by John Gerrard Keulemans.

References

★ Nunn, G & Stanley, S. (1998): Body Size Effects and Rates of Cytochrome ''b'' Evolution in Tube-Nosed Seabirds. ''Molecular Biology and Evolution'' '15'(10): 1360-1371 PDF fulltext Corrigendum