Endemic birds of Australia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is one of a series providing information about endemism among birds in the world's various zoogeographic zones. For an overview of this subject see Endemism in birds.

Contents

[edit] Patterns of endemism

Family-level endemism is prominent in Australia. The Australasian biogeographic region has the highest number of endemic families of any zoogeographic region except the Neotropics, and many of these families are endemic to Australia itself — the country therefore stakes a strong claim to be the world's greatest hotspot of bird endemism.

[edit] Australian endemic and near-endemic families

 Please help improve this section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.


The Australian endemic families are:

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.
  • Emu, a well-known monotypic family; the Emu is found in rural areas throughout the continent
  • Plains-wanderer, a monotypic family; Plains-wanderer is restricted to arid inland areas in the southeast of Australia
  • the Lyrebirds, two forest-dwelling species of southeast Australia
  • the Scrub-birds, two forest-dwelling species, one found in southeastern Australia, the other in southwest Australia

In addition to the families listed above, the following families are endemic to the Australasian region, with most of their species endemic to Australia:

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.

A further group of families endemic to the Australasian region, but where the species are predominantly New Guinea endemics are listed in the article on endemic birds of New Guinea.

[edit] Endemic Bird Areas

Birdlife International has defined the following Endemic Bird Areas (EBAs) in Australia:

181 Cape York
182 Queensland wet tropics
183 Eastern Australia
184 South-east Australia
185 Tasmania
186 Southwest Australia
187 North West Australia

Christmas Island, an Australian territory, is also an EBA.

In addition the following are classified as Secondary areas (areas with at least one restricted-range bird species, but not meeting the criteria to qualify as EBAs):

To be completed later.

[edit] List of species

The following is a list of bird species endemic to Australia:

[edit] Species endemic to coastal eastern Australia

[edit] Species endemic to the Cape York peninsula

[edit] Species endemic to the Queensland Wet Tropics

[edit] Species endemic to eastern Australia

[edit] Species found in more than one of the above areas, but not elsewhere

[edit] Species endemic to south-eastern Australia

To be completed later.

[edit] Species endemic to Tasmania

[edit] Species endemic to south-west Australia

[edit] Species endemic to north-west Australia

The Chestnut Rail is near-endemic to this region of Australia, elsewhere only being found on the Aru Islands.

[edit] Other endemics

This list is incomplete; you can help by expanding it.


 
Endemism in birds
Regional overviews

The Palaearctic: Western Palearctic | Central Asia | Japan
Afrotropics & Malagasy region: Eastern Africa | Western and central Africa | Southern Africa | Madagascar region
The Oriental region: S Asia | Andamans and Nicobars | SE Asia | Peninsular Malaysia, Sumatra, Java & Bali | Borneo | Sulawesi region | The Philippines | Taiwan
Australasia & the Pacific: Australia | New Guinea region | New Zealand | New Caledonia | Hawaii
North America: Eastern North America | Western North America | West Indies | Mexico and northern Central America | Southern Central America
South America: Galápagos Islands
Other: Southern Atlantic islands
Lists of: Endemic Bird Areas | Secondary Areas
Literature: Putting biodiversity on the map | Endemic Bird Areas of the World
Categories: Regional overviews | Endemic higher-level taxa | Restricted range endemics