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Turnicidae:
The buttonquails or hemipodes are a small family of birds which resemble, but are unrelated to, the true quails.
Buttonquail were traditionally placed in Gruiformes or Phasianidae (the crane and pheasant orders). The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy elevated them to ordinal status as the Turniciformes either because their accelerated rate of molecular evolution exceeded the limits of sensitivity of the DNA-DNA hybridization technique or because the authors did not perform the appropriate pairwise comparisons or both. Recent molecular genetic studies (Paton et al., 2003; Fain & Houde, 2004) indicate that turnicids correctly belong among shorebirds (order Charadriiformes). This is an Old World group, which inhabits warm grasslands.
These are small drab running birds, which avoid flying. The female is the brighter of the sexes, and initiates courtship. The male incubates the eggs and tends the young. |
