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| how well would ratites fare? | |
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| Topic Started: Jan 13 2017, 10:10 AM (1,998 Views) | |
| deathmetalfan6 | Jan 13 2017, 10:10 AM Post #1 |
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Zygote
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if you don't know what ratites are they are the large flightless birds. ostriches, emus, rheas, cassowaries, kiwis, and the extinct moas and elephant birds. when i first saw the future is wild i was very fascinated by the carakillers, the evolved form of the caracara. i think its really cool that a bird that once flew lost its wings and became a ground hunter. ratites have kinda gone the same path in real life, they had ancestors that flew but over time they became built for running and lost their ability to fly. the more endangered ratites like cassowaries probably won't do so hot but i can easily imagine the more common ratites like emus and rheas giving up their omnivorous diets and taking on the role of top predators if large mammal predators die out over time because they are very strong and fast birds. thats just my idea, what do you guys think? |
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| Fazaner | Jan 13 2017, 12:56 PM Post #2 |
Шашава птичурина
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Emus and rheas could fare well, with theirs numbers and adaptability, not so sure about kiwis and cassowaries, and ostriches are farmed around the world so that could make intresting situacions. And 1 last advise, there is a thred on general spec that is abut questions that dont need seperate topics. |
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| Beetleboy | Jan 13 2017, 12:58 PM Post #3 |
neither lizard nor boy nor beetle . . . but a little of all three
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Yeah, I would say most large ratities (possible exception of cassowary) would do okay, especially with many of them being so widely distributed as they are now farmed in lots of places. I would say that in most future evolution projects, it's safe to say that at least 1 or 2 ratites should escape the Holocene extinction event unscathed. |
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| kusanagi | Jul 20 2017, 05:23 PM Post #4 |
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Adolescent
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Struthio camelus, Dromaius novaehollandiae and Rhea pennata are all listed as least concern but strangely Rhea americana fares less well, as near threatened(!) and Struthio molybdophanes is vulnerable. I always wondered where the European ratites were given ratites can exist in Patagonia and Tasmania and even the less hardy ostriches manage to inhabit Mediterranean climate in the Cape. Ratites might well survive man's twilight and yet stay conservative because no genus of ratite today has more than three species and all of them except the divergent forest cassowaries look and behave similarly. Flying or not their LCA probably looked much as they do today. |
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| opeFool | Jul 20 2017, 05:26 PM Post #5 |
Adolescent
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Is "ratite" a name used to identify all flightless birds or is it a set group/clade? I've been a bit confused about this for a while now. |
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Xipetotec | Mbio Bila Mshindi | Diarios California Quotes
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| Talenkauen | Jul 20 2017, 05:34 PM Post #6 |
Perpetually paranoid iguanodont
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Ratite birds include only birds in the clade Ratites, which are mostly large megafaunal birds (save for kiwis). |
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| kusanagi | Jul 20 2017, 06:18 PM Post #7 |
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Adolescent
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Palaeognath birds are divided into tinamous, arguably plus the Lithornithidae, and all the others which are called ratites. On the ratite side of the tree the New Zealand ratites diverge first and they happen to be morphological outliers to the rest of the ratites. It might seem odd that kiwis and lithornithids be so closely related to highly herbivorous birds such as moas but the same kind of thing happens in shorebirds, where the herbivorous thinocorids have a particularly close relationship to the probing scolopacids (Livesey and Zusi). http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/6664 By way of contrast molecular trees place tinamous within the classic ratites and make a zoogeographical nonsense of ratite distribution. Since you ask, the extinct herbivorous sylviornithids, dromornithids, gastornithids and the big, predatory cariamans are not ratites. Animals such as Phorusrhacos and Bathornis are related to the two species of seriemas whereas Sylviornis, Dromornis and Gastornis are megafauna related to ducks and chickens. All big flightless birds today are ratites but this was not at all true, not even as recently as the Pleistocene. Edited by kusanagi, Jul 20 2017, 06:22 PM.
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| LittleLazyLass | Jul 20 2017, 06:18 PM Post #8 |
Proud quilt in a bag
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Ratite refers to any member of the group Paleognathae that's not a tinamou. edit: Kusanagi, are you trusting morphological classification over molecular classification? The latter is almost always considered more trustworthy. In the case of paleognaths, it in no way created a biogeographical problem; it's documented all the individuals groups became flightless independently, with the exception of emus and cassowaries. This is the modern classification: 
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| kusanagi | Jul 20 2017, 06:41 PM Post #9 |
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Adolescent
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This kind of statement is why I disdain the molecular trees so much. For a start no one can ever demonstrate molecular phylogenies are more reliable than morphological ones, when the only way to test a phylogenty - the fossils - are morphological by their nature. Imagine attempting a phylogeny of living animals using only morphological data from living animals without any fossils, think how wrong the tree would look, and that is the problem with claiming molecular trees are more trustworthy. At present the perching lithornithids form a clade with the tinamous, so there are no strong fliers within the ratite total group capable of crossing oceans. And how can it be documented that all the ratite orders became flightless independently? There are no flighted stem taxa to any of them yet, but my point never was that ratites share a flightless LCA, anyway: after all in clades such as rallids flightlessness can happen multiple times. Rather how come the elephant birds are sister of the kiwis, and tinamous of the moas...? Its little more than a mess, honestly. Are aepyornithid ancestors supposed to have flown from Australasia to Madagascar? Even including tinamous within the ratites, there is none of the crown palaeognaths could ever make that kind of journey on the wing. It is simply neater that the ostrich-type ratites form a clade within the ratites that is morphologically conservative owing to their seeming failure to diverge into anything more aberrant than the cassowary. The long neck and small head of ratites is unusual among neornithean land birds (but not unique: think of cranes) and such an odd morphotype might be unlikely to evolve independently several times in this one clade. Edited by kusanagi, Jul 20 2017, 06:46 PM.
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| LittleLazyLass | Jul 20 2017, 07:17 PM Post #10 |
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Proud quilt in a bag
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Well, there's the fact that evolution is entirely dictated by genetics and not by morphology, which is susceptible to convergent evolution. We don't group all primates together because they climb trees - we group them together because we think they shared a common ancestor. The independent variable of the DNA is simply more trustworthy than the dependent variable of morphology.
What? In what way are fossils a "test" of any given tree? Molecular analysis is the test for morphological analysis, not the other way around, which is why just about all modern taxonomists agree bats aren't related to primates and that pangolins aren't related to xenarthrans - do you still support these archaic 20th century placements, as well?
For one, there's the fact that it is the scenario that poses a whole swathe of problems. If they all came from flightless ancestors, how did they all get to where they are now? Do you think something like an ostrich can raft across the Atlantic, or do you prefer the idea that ratites go far back into the Cretaceous in order to put rheas in South America? How about Madagascar? Did a flightless taxon manage that trip too? How about the ones that walked over to Australia and New Zealand?
Unless you know anything about modern taxonomy and follow the molecular phylogenies, finding tinamous deeply nested within your "ratites".
Your point? We know they were ancestrally capable fliers, and since it's obvious there were half a dozen independent cases of flightlessness evolving, what's wrong with idea that they continued being capable fliers longer than we used to expect? So we can cling to our historical ideas?
So you throw aside all the science done by actual scientists just because their preposition seems "inconvenient"? Because it wasn't what you expected at a cursory glance? Do you also throw in the dromornithids and gastornithids because the idea that a large, flightless, and herbivorous bauplan for a bird isn't advantageous enough to evolve several times? Obviously not, but the point stands. Additionally, I'd say the completely forelimb-less moa and the kiwi are both more aberrant than cassowaries are.
That morphology was clearly advantageous for it to evolve; why could it not be selected for multiple times? |
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| Archeoraptor | Jul 20 2017, 07:20 PM Post #11 |
"A living paradox"
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lithornids were fairly well fliers so somethign like them could colonised lots ofplaces about kiwis and elephant birds take into accoutn that in teh time of their divergence India was stll and island so is a good jumpimng point |
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| Carlos | Jul 20 2017, 07:24 PM Post #12 |
Adveho in me Lucifero
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Flighted palaeognaths were common in the Early Cenozoic and capable of oceanic travel as recently as the Miocene (Proapteryx), so it stands to reason that ratites lost the ability to fly multiple times. At this point, there is no evidence for gondwannan vicariance. The earliest ratites are european Paleocene species, and it is believed ALL palaeognath diversity evolved from laurasian flying ancestors. |
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| Carlos | Jul 20 2017, 07:25 PM Post #13 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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In short, instead of giant chickens running around gondwana and getting isolated as it broke apart, we have a diversity of northern songbird-like species evolving into many insular giants. |
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| kusanagi | Jul 21 2017, 09:01 AM Post #14 |
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Adolescent
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Little: It was already demonstrated that pangolins are similar to xenarthrans only by homoplasies, long before modern molecular trees. And yes for whhat it is worth, the tarsals of microbats suggest a Chiroptera + Euarchonta clade. Molecular character states are subject to homoplasy as are morphological data and yes, where there is a conflict between them both must be considered. https://oup.silverchair-cdn.com/oup/backfile/Content_public/Journal/zoolinnean/132/4/10.1111_j.1096-3642.2001.tb02473.x/1/j.1096-3642.2001.tb02473.x.pdf?Expires=1500738569&Signature=M6mppWIb7l0e-XueE6EYFDXouyx6qjs9NhGtonEfrruv4ElWIDfadOaaap071L6~uVuJ6k8DBwPAVZClcMdIYgo7XghxFmVQcMBzcdjYdMv-fkGGMpnUFog8UUnurW2tN5pvZErIs3BdSZlFLJndWE4pAnLVXE2dmVAW-sHVm533u9rwUR4f-d9sGY3pd9dgjYNyMT18g7mFcfUEZe7WWWuIeryhkqS4EekhZ5EtlAXuHiCUocZ-LWC9-U8dvAg5MyeYbDEsetKTVBn1KPsuGQ8zTfLi3OxmnSLpMxXVYmOtdmGITzJasc6qn6z4RaVHnjh4OcKuvOa4zHmq61qsQQ__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAIUCZBIA4LVPAVW3Q These debates on pop science sites always end up devolving into arguments by insistence and straw manning (I never aid the Ratite LCA had to be flightless if you read more closely). For a start molecular data does not even mean the same thing as genetic data, as many people seemt o think it does. If you look at the genetic data alone glires would be the most stemward of placentals. Anyone who understands philosophy will notice the circular reasoning in a statement like "That morphology was clearly advantageous for it to evolve; why could it not be selected for multiple times?" and any paleontologist will hopefully spot the error in dismissing morphology-only phylogenies. I mean if bones and teeth can be discounted so easily, there would be no cladistic analyses of dinosaurs and the like. Without molecular data the trees will all be wrong anyway, correct? https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/66/Circular-Reasoning Archeoraptor: Litornithids including Paracathartes are a well defined, monophyletic outgroup outside of the ratites. They are not ratite ancestors and a combined dataset drawing tinamous into ratites still leaves lithornithids as the outgroup. Therefore there would still be no reason to assume any crown ratite ever flew better than a tinamou. John Faa: Protapteryx was not flighted nor flightless as far as anyone can tell. Atlantisia weighs as little as 34g and acanthisittids may weigh under 10g whereas the largest flying birds today may weigh over 20kg which is larger than rheas. Assuming size correlates to flight ability is contrar to observations of living birds but the assumption formerly caused misinterpretations of Harpagornis and Ornimegalonyx as well as the giant species of Athene from Crete. In H. and the Cretan owl skeletal material demonstrates flightedness and O. is supposedly known but undescribed from Floridan cave deposits (Twilight Beasts) so it must have flown across. As long as the interpretation of P. as volant rests on its size alone then there is no evidence that P. was a flier. Edited by kusanagi, Jul 21 2017, 09:09 AM.
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| Carlos | Jul 21 2017, 10:54 AM Post #15 |
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Adveho in me Lucifero
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It's not just size: Proapteryx had relatively thin hindlimb elements more comparable to those of flying birds than flightless species. Even if it was flightless, it had to have evolved from a then recent volant ancestor, which means volant non-tinamou ratites were around at least as recently as the early Miocene. |
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