#hesperoburhinus

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[2995/11080] Double-striped thick-knee - Burhinus bistriatus

Note: Clements places this bird in the genus Hesperoburhinus.

Order: Charadriiformes Suborder: Charadrii Family: Burhinidae (stone-curlews)

Photo credit: Jhon Velasquez via Macaulay Library

[new-dinosaurs]

Hesperoburhinus Černý et al., 2023 (new genus)

(An individual of Hesperoburhinus bistriatus, photographed by Steve Garvie, under CC BY-SA 2.0)

Meaning of name: Hesperoburhinus = western [in Greek] Burhinus [genus of dikkops including the Eurasian stone-curlew]

Species included: H. bistriatus (double-striped thick-knee, type species, previously in Burhinus) and H. superciliaris (Peruvian thick-knee, previously in Burhinus)

Age: Holocene (Meghalayan), extant

Where found: Woodlands, savannas, grasslands, and semi-deserts in Central and South America, as well as some Caribbean islands

Notes: Hesperoburhinus is a genus of dikkops (also called stone-curlews or thick-knees), a group of primarily nocturnal shorebirds. Despite being shorebirds, many dikkops can be found in arid inland habitats. Members of Hesperoburhinus are the only extant dikkops that live in the Americas, and can be readily recognized by having two black stripes on either side of a central gray stripe on the top of their head. Traditionally, they were classified along with most other dikkops in the genus Burhinus. However, recent studies suggest that Burhinus proper is more closely related to the large-beaked dikkop species in the genus Esacus than to the American dikkops.

Although one way to revise the taxonomy of these birds to be in line with their phylogenetic relationships would be to lump Esacus into Burhinus, the lineage leading to the American dikkops is thought to have split from other dikkops over 30 million years ago, older than the estimated origin time of most other modern shorebird genera. To emphasize this long period of separation, the authors of a new paper chose to coin a new genus for the American dikkops.

Reference: Černý, D., P. van Els, R. Natale, and S.M.S. Gregory. 2023. A new genus-group name for Burhinus bistriatus (Wagler, 1829) and Burhinus superciliaris (Tschudi, 1843). Avian Systematics 1: 31–43.