The American white ibis is a species of bird in the ibis family, Threskiornithidae. Males are larger and have longer bills than females. The breeding range runs along the Gulf and Atlantic Coast, and the coasts of Mexico and Central America. Outside the breeding period, the range extends further inland in North America and also includes the Caribbean. Populations in central Venezuela overlap and interbreed with the scarlet ibis.
About American white ibis in brief
The American white ibis is a species of bird in the ibis family, Threskiornithidae. It is found from Virginia via the Gulf Coast of the United States south through most of the coastal New World tropics. Males are larger and have longer bills than females. The breeding range runs along the Gulf and Atlantic Coast, and the coasts of Mexico and Central America. Outside the breeding period, the range extends further inland in North America and also includes the Caribbean. Populations in central Venezuela overlap and interbreed with the scarlet ibis. The two have been classified by some authorities as a single species. Their diet consists primarily of small aquatic prey, such as insects and small fishes. Crayfish are its preferred food in most regions, but it can adjust its diet according to the habitat and prey abundance. Its main foraging behavior is probing with its beak at the bottom of shallow water to feel for and capture its prey. It does not see the prey. Pairs are predominantly monogamous and both parents care for the young. Males tend to engage in extra-pair copulation with other females to increase their reproductive success. Males have also been found to pirate food from unmated females and juveniles during the breeding season. Birds of intermediate to red plumage have persisted for generations. The white plumage of adult American ibises are distinctive. Adults have black wingtips that are usually only visible in flight.
In-breeding condition the long down-curved bill and long legs are bright red-orange. It fades to a paler pink on the legs and the tip of the bill is difficult to determine in the first ten days of breeding season, when the skin is darken to darkens to pink. It has an almost purple-tinted red on the bill and an almost red-intinted on the leg, which fades to paler and paler in the second week of breeding. The species name is the Latin adjective albus \”white\”. It was originally described by Carl Linnaeus in the 1758 10th edition of his Systema Naturae, where it was given the binomial name of Scolopax albus. Local creole names in Louisiana include bec croche and petit flaman. Johann Georg Wagler gave the species its current bincular name in 1832 when he erected the new genus Eudocimus. There has long been debate on whether the two should be considered subspecies or closely related species. The American Ornithologists’ Union considers the two to be a superspecies as they are parapatric. They have questioned whether white birds of South America are in fact part of the ruon, rather than the albus taxon, and acknowledge that more investigation is needed to determine this. The only other species to be classified as a subspecies is the scarlett ibis, whose only other family is the EudOCimus. The scarlet and white ibises overlap along the coast and in the Llanos region of Colombia and Venezuela.
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This page is based on the article American white ibis published in Wikipedia (as of Nov. 20, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
