Hoatzin
The hoatzin, also known as the reptile bird, skunk bird, stinkbird, or Canje pheasant, is a species of tropical bird found in swamps, riparian forests, and mangroves of the Amazon and the Orinoco basins in South America. It is notable for having chicks that have claws on two of their wing digits.
It is the only member of the genus Opisthocomus. This is the only extant genus in the family Opisthocomidae. The taxonomic position of this family has been greatly debated by specialists, and is still far from clear.
Description
The hoatzin is pheasant-sized, with a total length of, and a long neck and small head. It has an unfeathered blue face with maroon eyes, and its head is topped by a spiky, rufous crest. The long, sooty-brown tail is broadly tipped buff. The upper parts are dark, sooty-brown-edged buff on the wing coverts, and streaked buff on the mantle and nape. The under parts are buff, while the crissum, primaries, underwing coverts and flanks are rich rufous-chestnut, but this is mainly visible when it opens its wings.The hoatzin is an herbivore, eating leaves and fruit, and has an unusual digestive system with an enlarged crop used for fermentation of vegetable matter, in a manner broadly analogous to the digestive system of mammalian ruminants. The alternative name of "stinkbird" is derived from the bird's foul odour, which is caused by the fermentation of food in its digestive system.
This is a noisy species, with a variety of hoarse calls, including groans, croaks, hisses and grunts. These calls are often associated with body movements, such as wing spreading.
Taxonomy, systematics and evolution
The hoatzin was originally described in 1776 by German zoologist Statius Müller. There has been much debate about the hoatzin's relationships with other birds. Because of its distinctness it has been given its own family, the Opisthocomidae, and its own suborder, the Opisthocomi. At various times, it has been allied with such taxa as the tinamous, the Galliformes, the rails, the bustards, seriemas, sandgrouse, doves, turacos and other Cuculiformes, and mousebirds. A whole genome sequencing study published in 2012 places the hoatzin as the sister taxon of a clade composed of Gruiformes and Charadriiformes.In 2015, genetic research indicated that the hoatzin is the last surviving member of a bird line that branched off in its own direction 64 million years ago, shortly after the extinction event that killed the non-avian dinosaurs.
History of the debate
Historical placement as gamebirds is based mainly on phenetic considerations of external morphology, which are considered unreliable and generally dismissed today; the gamebirds together with the waterfowl are classified as Galloanserae whereas the hoatzin are not. However, cuckoos have zygodactyl feet and turacos are semi-zygodactylous, whereas the hoatzin has the more typical anisodactyl foot with three toes forward, one backwards. The evolution of avian dactyly, on the other hand, is not entirely resolved to satisfaction.Sibley and Ahlquist in 1990 considered the hoatzin likely to be a basal cuckoo based on DNA-DNA hybridization. Avise et al. in 1994 found mtDNA cytochrome b sequence data to agree with Sibley and Ahlquist's previous treatment. Subsequently, Hughes and Baker in 1999 proclaimed to have "resolved" the relationships of the hoatzin to be with turacos, based on their own analysis of 6 sets of mtDNA and one of nDNA sequences.
Using mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequences of increased length, Sorenson et al. in 2003 noted that all three previous DNA studies were apparently flawed due to errors in methodology, small sample size, and sequencing errors; their study strongly suggested against a close relationship between the hoatzin and cuckoos or turacos. It was not possible, though, to reliably determine the hoatzin's closest living relatives. Even though it tended to group with doves, this was not at all well-supported, with little more than 10% likelihood at best that such an arrangement was accurate according to Sorenson et al.s analysis.
Fain and Houde in 2004 proposed a dichotomy in the Neoaves based on β-fibrinogen intron 7 sequences. In their suggested phylogeny, the hoatzin was a basal member of the Metaves, a proposed clade that would include many other historically problematic bird families, such as flamingos, grebes, tropicbirds, sandgrouse and mesites. While the doves did also group with the "Metaves", no close relationship between these and the hoatzin within Metaves was recovered.
While the other major neoavian lineage, Coronaves, largely agreed in its internal phylogeny with what is currently emerging as consensus, the interrelationships of the "Metaves" were not resolvable. Nor do supposed metavian groupings like flamingos and nightjars or tropicbirds and hummingbirds seem to have a factual basis rather than being artifactually grouped based on molecular homoplasies or lack of informative characters within the group, as Fain and Houde originally suggested; Metaves instead may be a "wastebasket taxon".
It seems probable that the taxa included in the Metaves by Fain and Houde contain some good clades, such as Caprimulgiformes, the Mirandornithes, or the Apodiformes. Considering that some "odd Gruiformes" which might be each other's closest living relatives make up most of the remaining Metaves, the doves, the hoatzin, and sandgrouse would remain as "Metaves incerta sedis". This would seem to suggest that the hoatzin is at least more closely related to doves than to many of the other purported 'coronavian' families that previously have been suggested. Subsequent multigene studies of Ericson et al. 2006 and of Hackett et al. 2008 corroborated the Metaves clades, dependent on the inclusion of one and two genes respectively, but the latter did not recover the hoatzin with Metaves.
More recently, Houde embarked on sequencing the entire genome of the hoatzin. As of 2011, it was reported that more than 1.4 billion base pairs of hoatzin DNA had been sequenced, roughly equal to its entire haploid genome, but that only about 2.4% of its genome had yet been assembled. Completion of this project would be welcomed for more reasons than resolution of hoatzin relationships. Out of the diverse Class Aves, the genomes of no more than 4 species of birds including of the waterfowl/fowl and songbirds have been sequenced. Moreover, much might be learned by coordinating these efforts with that of the metagenomic analysis of the hoatzin foregut ruminant bacterial microflora.
Fossil record
With respect to other material evidence, an undisputed fossil record of a close hoatzin relative is specimen UCMP 42823, a single cranium backside. It is of Miocene origin and was recovered in the upper Magdalena River Valley, Colombia in the well known fauna of La Venta. This has been placed into a distinct, less derived genus, Hoazinoides, but clearly would be placed into the same family as the extant species. It markedly differs insofar as that the cranium of the living hoatzin is characteristic, being much domed, rounded, and shortened, and that these autapomorphies were less pronounced in the Miocene bird. Miller discussed these findings in the light of the supposed affiliation of the hoatzins and the Galliformes, which was the favored hypothesis at that time, but had been controversial almost since its inception. He cautioned, however, "that Hoazinoides by no means establishes a phyletic junction point with other galliforms." for obvious reasons, as we know today. Anything other than the primary findings of Miller are not to be expected in any case, as by the time of Hoazinoides, essentially all modern bird families are either known or believed to have been present and distinct. Going further back in time, the Late Eocene or Early Oligocene Filholornis from France has also been considered "proof" of a link between the hoatzin and the gamebirds. The fragmentary fossil Onychopteryx from the Eocene of Argentina and the quite complete but no less enigmatic Early-Middle Eocene Foro panarium are sometimes used to argue for a hoatzin-cuculiform link. But as demonstrated above, this must be considered highly speculative, if not as badly off the mark as the relationship with Cracidae discussed by Miller.The earliest record of the order Opisthocomiformes is Protoazin parisiensis, from the latest Eocene of Romainville, France. The holotype and only known specimen is NMB PG.70, consisting of partial coracoid, partial scapula, and partial phalanx. According to the phylogenetic analysis performed by the authors, Namibiavis, although later, is more basal than Protoazin. Opisthocomiforms seem to have been much more widespread in the past, with the present South American distribution being only a relic. By the Early to Middle Miocene, they were probably extinct in Europe already, as formations dated to this time and representing fluvial or lacustrine palaeoenvironments, in which the hoatzin thrives today, have yielded dozens of bird specimens, but no opisthocomiform. A possible explanation to account for the extinction of Protoazin between the Late Eocene and the Early Miocene in Europe, and of Namibiavis after the Middle Miocene of Sub-Saharan Africa is the arrival of arboreal carnivorans, predation by which could have had a devastating effect on the local opisthocomiforms, if they were as poor flyers and had similarly vulnerable nesting strategies as today's hoatzins. Felids and viverrids first arrived in Europe from Asia after the Turgai Sea closed, marking the boundary between the Eocene and the Oligocene. None of these predators, and for the matter, no placental predator at all was present in South America before the Great American Interchange 3 mya, which could explain the survival of the hoatzin there. In addition to being the earliest fossil record of an opisthocomiform, Protoazin was also the earliest find of one, but it was forgotten for more than a century, being described only in 2014.
Hoazinavis is an extinct genus of early opisthocomiform from Late Oligocene and Early Miocene deposits of Brazil. It was collected in 2008 from the Tremembé Formation of São Paulo, Brazil. It was first named by Gerald Mayr, Herculano Alvarenga and Cécile Mourer-Chauviré in 2011 and the type species is Hoazinavis lacustris.
Namibiavis is another extinct genus of early opisthocomoform from early Middle Miocene deposits of Namibia. It was collected from Arrisdrift, southern Namibia. It was first named by Cécile Mourer-Chauviré in 2003 and the type species is Namibiavis senutae.
Behaviour
Feeding
The hoatzin is a folivore - it eats the leaves of the plants that grow in the marshy and riverine habitats where it lives. It clambers around clumsily among the branches, and being quite tame, often allows close approach and is reluctant to flush. The hoatzin uses a leathery bump on the bottom of its crop to help balance itself on the branches. Once it was thought that the species could eat the leaves of only arums and mangroves, but the species is now known to consume the leaves of more than fifty species. One study undertaken in Venezuela found that the hoatzins diet was 82% leaves, 10% flowers, and 8% fruit. Any feeding of insects or other animal matter is purely accidental.One of this species' many peculiarities is that it has a digestive system unique amongst birds. Hoatzins use bacterial fermentation in the front part of the gut to break down the vegetable material they consume, much as cattle and other ruminants do. Unlike ruminants, however, which possess the rumen, the hoatzin has an unusually large crop, folded in two chambers, and a large, multi-chambered lower esophagus. Its stomach chamber and gizzard are much smaller than in other birds. The crop of the hoatzin is so large as to displace the flight muscles and keel of the sternum, much to the detriment of their flight capacity. Because of aromatic compounds in the leaves they consume and the bacterial fermentation, the bird has a disagreeable, manure-like odor and is only hunted by humans for food in times of dire need.