Horned Curassow
Pauxi unicornis
Very distinctive and very rare curassow of the central Bolivian Andes. Note distinctive blue vertical “horn” above the orange bill. Due to small range and high hunting pressure, only known from a few remote sites in the middle elevation forest of Santa Cruz and Cochabamba departments, Bolivia. Very wary and skittish, most easily detected by low, deep calls. You are part of an exclusive club if you see one of these in the wild.
Identification
The horned curassow is among the largest cracid species. It measures 85 to 95 cm (33 to 37 in) in length. Body mass in large males is up to 3.7 to 3.9 kg (8.2 to 8.6 lb) and only the great curassow is heavier amongst the cracids, although the black curassow and the closely related helmeted curassow are around the same length. Among standard measurements, the wing chord is 38.1 to 40.2 cm (15.0 to 15.8 in), the tail is 31 to 34.8 cm (12.2 to 13.7 in) and the tarsus is 10 to 10.8 cm (3.9 to 4.3 in). It has a distinctive horn or casque on the forehead which projects for over 6 cm. The plumage is generally black, but lacks a blue sheen in primary feathers, and has a white belly, thigh tufts and under-tail coverts. The tail also has white tips.
Taxonomy
In 1937 while in Bolivia Mr M. A. Carriker found two birds, a male and female, which were in the cracid family. The specimens were subsequently described as a new species by James Bond and Rodolphe Meyer de Schauensee in 1939 and given the scientific name Pauxi unicornis placing it in a genus Pauxi alongside the species P. pauxi. In 1969 another two birds, again a male and female were discovered which resembled those found by Mr. Carriker in 1937. However this time they were found in Peru a long way from the previous P. unicornis discoveries in Bolivia. These Peruvian specimens were described by John Weske and John Terborgh in 1971 as a new subspecies of P. unicornis which they named in honour of Maria Koepcke.<p>Although the consensus at the time of discovery for P. unicornis to be a species with two subspecies in the genus Pauxi, many different suggestions have been made since. Some suggestions relate to the grouping of species and subspecies within the genus Pauxi. In 1943 Wetmore and Phelps described a new subspecies of the closely related P. pauxi called P. p. gilliardi. When Wetmore and Phelps looked at the three Pauxi forms known at the time, they concluded that P. p. gilliardi was an intermediate form between P. pauxi and P. unicornis. As a result of this they grouped all three forms into a single species with unicornis becoming a subspecies of pauxi. This position was subsequently rejected by Charles Vaurie who argued that P. pauxi and P. unicornis were not conspecific. When Weske and Terborgh discovered the subspecies koepckeae they concluded pauxi and unicornis should be considered separate species. Additional studies by Gastañaga and coauthors in 2011 considered koepckeae to be a wholly distinct species on the basis of a somewhat smaller and more triangular crest and different vocalisations. Gastañaga et al. also coined the name Sira curassow as an English name for the bird in their 2011 paper; the name used by the local inhabitants for the bird is piuri.<p>Other taxonomic suggestions discuss whether the genus Pauxi should stand alone or be grouped with other genera. In 1965 François Vuilleumier suggested the Pauxi species should be moved into a single genus alongside all the other species in the closely related genera Mitu, Crax and Nothocrax. Just two years later Charles Vaurie opposed this 'lumping' of species and argued that Pauxi, Mitu, Crax and Nothocrax should each be their own genera. Not content with either of these two options Delacour and Amadon suggested that Pauxi and Mitu should indeed be grouped with Crax, but that Nothocrax was distinct enough to be its on genus. Many subsequent authors followed Vaurie, Delacour and Amadon in having Nothocrax as a sister clade to Pauxi, Mitu and Crax, while most have followed Vaurie in having the three other clades as three distinct genera.<p>Mitochondrial analysis conducted in 2004 suggests that P. unicornis is a sister species to Mitu tuberosum, while the other Pauxi species, P. pauxi, is sister to the combined Mitu and P. unicornis clade. This means the genus Pauxi is not monophyletic but paraphyletic, and to resolve this parsimoniously the genus Pauxi should be sunk into synonymy with Mitu. The paraphyly of Pauxi could be due to incomplete lineage sorting, where a gene tree is inconsistent with its species tree, however this phenomenon should be less prevalent in deep phylogenetic splits (i.e. between genera). Because of this, Pereira et al. conclude incomplete lineage sorting is unlikely to account for the paraphyletic Pauxi genera because, according to their own analysis, Mitu and Pauxi diverged approximately 6.5mya.
- Scientific name
- Pauxi unicornis
- Authority
- Bond, J & Meyer de Schauensee, 1939
- Order
- Galliformes
- Family
- Cracidae
- Genus
- Pauxi
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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