Talk:Phasianidae

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The Wikipedia article on the chicken says that it "... is believed to be descended from the wild Asian Red Junglefowl, Gallus gallus." It seems like there ought to be mention of that on this page. I found it confusing some time back when I was trying to track down the taxonomy of the domestic chicken, and, while the chicken article itself gave the bird's taxonomy, none of the groupings to which it belonged mentioned the chicken at all. However, I defer to the judgement of those who know more about birds than I do.--64.81.243.120 07:32, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The info is, and was on Red Junglefowl and Junglefowl, although I've moved it to a more prominent position in the latter article. jimfbleak 07:39, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)

About the domestic chicken, there are some that consider it its own species because they claim that another species may have been involved. Frankyboy5 23:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Are peafowl really pheasants?

I have a few reasons to doubt it:

• They don't look anything like other pheasants, just beautiful birds with iridescent plumage.
• Their legs are far longer.

I agree because they don't look like pheasants at all.

This site claims that they aren't related [1] and that the bird, as well as the argus pheasants and their allies shall be classified as another family. This site also claims that there is more than one species of Green Peafowl, Pavo muticus. Additionally, that site could be related to this gallery [2], which also tells of more than one species of green peafowl. This site shows actual comparisons to other sub/species of dragonbirds and says that some captive birds are not Pavo muticus muticus (they call it P. m. javanensis) as many of us know them but P. muticus muticus which they say is different and is called the Pahang or Malay Dragonbird which they say is extinct in the wild. The site even says that Jean Théodore Delacour thought the species were identical but then admitted he had too little skins to verify. They claim the species is different and that genetic work is underway.

Unfortunately, there is no reliable source available. Only these two sites have told anything about these topics. Can anyone find another site that agrees?????? Frankyboy5 23:15, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

Handbook of the Birds of the World, Madge and McGowan, Pheasants, Partridges and Grouse ISBN 0-7136-3966-0, and ITIS all place the peafowl in Phasianidae, and don't split the peafowl the way you suggest - seems fairly authorative to me. Appearance is not a good guide to taxonomy. Red-winged Blackbird looks nothing like Montezuma Oropendola, but is in the same family. However, it's completely unrelated to the more similar Blackbird jimfbleak 05:26, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There needs to be genetic work on this, some birds look like they are related but are completely unrelated. Frankyboy5 00:23, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

I don't think that the Blackbird anything looks like the Red-Winged Blackbird, it looks a bit like a thrush and that's why it was classified in that family and that can be very misleading as I read a book that showed how Meadowlarks look like some other unrelated bird. Frankyboy5 01:14, 29 October 2006 (UTC)

Peafowl are pheasants (Phasianidae) according to internal morphology, most characters of external appearance, behavior, fossil record and molecular characters. They form (apparently - upcoming paper in Cladistics journal which will be a major advance in galliform phylogeny) a subfamily with argus and peacock pheasants, so the initial question can be decisively answered with "yes, but a quite special kind of pheasants".

Please also note that "genetic work" does not have the reliability it is generally assumed to have in pop-science. For example, a new paper demonstrates that a whole friggin bunch of molecular divergence datings in birds is based on bad science (to be duly discussed under Molecular clock). All the molecular hypothesis are based on statistics, which may be wrong; these hypotheses simply say "it's more probable that this-and-this relationship is the correct one". Usually they are good though (and when you throw in fossil morphology, they are quite robust indeed), but it is fairly consensus by now that allowing a disagreeing molecular study to overrule "just so" other evidence simply because it has "genes" in it is bogus science if not outright pseudoscience.

Returning to the original question, the phasianids as a lineage are fairly old but ecologically conservative, which may explain why most look alike but some are remarkably different (the Great Argus doesn't really look like a typical pheasant either, nor does the Satyr Tragopan). At any rate, most people do not know of the Palawan Peacock-pheasant (of which an image would be great, but hard to get - see here which neatly fits in between peafowl and the usual pheasants (though the actual relationship is somewhat different). The outstanding plumage of peacocks, the more arboreal habits, snake eating etc seems to be a consequence (though not a necessary one as the Great Argus shows) of the increase in size. Quite unscientifically but colorfully, a peacock is a weird phesant on steroids. Everything it has in exaggerated form is found in its smaller relatives in a more subdued state.

Re molecular work on P. muticus - this is long overdue and urgent too (before some of the rarer populations disappear). I'd still put my bucks on a single species mainly for reasons of biogeography, but this bird appears seriously undersplit. Dysmorodrepanis 16:08, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, someone needs to do genetic work before the Javan, Pahang, Deqen, Arakan Spicifer, Southern Spicifer, Kunming Imperator, Tonkin Imperator and Annametic Dragonbirds become extinct!!!!!!!!! Quickly!!!!!!!!! I think there might be 5 species and that Peafowl and their allies aren't related to pheasants. Frankyboy5 23:47, 5 November 2006 (UTC)

"A peafowl can't be a pheasant because it existed well before the first pheasant", says Kermit Blackwood, one of the few people who believe that the Green Peafowl is six species. Frankyboy5 05:15, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm curious .... what species is the first pheasant ? And who is this Kermit Blackwood guy ? How does he knew peafowl existed before "first pheasant" ? It's getting weirder now, Frankyboy --Stavenn 06:06, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

See this [3]. However, it's in a forum.Frankyboy5 17:38, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Dysmorodrepanis: That doesn't really surprise me, and I already knew that people put far too much credence in computational models automagically finding "optimal trees", but given attempts to transfer the method to linguistics, with additional pitfalls when you don't know enough about historical linguistics, this is reassuring for sceptics of the whole subgrouping-by-computer business/industry. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 23:14, 8 January 2013 (UTC)

Stub versus start

I tagged this as a {{galliformes-stub}}, User:Jimfbleak untagged it. So now I've tagged it as a {{livestock-stub}}. It currently comprises some 8 sentences - mostly simple sentences, a list of genera, and a {{taxobox}}.--Doug.^{(talk • contribs)} 12:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Livestock stub is inappropriate, most species are not farmed - if naming because some are, might as well tag bird and animal as livestock too. I removed the more relevant galliformes-stub because it seemed to be based only on the length of the article. If you can suggest substantial material for the Phasianidae family as a whole which is not covered by the Galliformes article or the individual species and genus accounts, why not add it, rather than tagging? 16:51, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Missing species

Now that this family article is devided into subfamilies and species lists are in them, it seems that some species are missing. For example Gallus and Peafowl don't get a mention in subfamily articles. What is their place?

Good catch. Need to fix that. Sabine's Sunbird talk 20:01, 7 August 2011 (UTC)