Genus of birds
Chloephaga is a genus of sheldgeese in the family Anatidae. Other sheldgeese are found in the genera "Alopochen" and "Neochen".
Taxonomy.
The genus "Chloephaga" was introduced in 1838 by the English naturalist Thomas Campbell Eyton in his "A Monograph on the Anatidae, or Duck Tribe". He designated the type species as "Chloephaga magellanica". This is "Anas magellanica" Gmelin, JF 1789, which is a synonym of "Anas leucoptera" Gmelin, JF 1789. "Anas leucoptera" is now considered as a subspecies of the upland goose "Chloephaga picta leucoptera". The genus name comes from the combination of the Ancient Greek "khloē" meaning "grass" with "-phagos" meaning "-eating".
A molecular phylogenetic study by Mariana Bulgarella and collaborators published in 2014 found that the Orinoco goose in the monotypic genus "Neochem", was embedded in the genus "Chloephaga":
Based on this result, some authorities place the Orinoco goose together with the Andean goose in the resurrected genus "Oressochen".
A fossilized partial coracoid (CTES-PZ 7797) of an indeterminate "Chloephaga" species sharing some characters with the extant upland goose is known from the upper Pleistocene Toropí Formation (also called the Yupoí Formation) in Corrientes Province, Argentina, 700 kilometers further north than the northernmost present-day record of the genus.
Species.
The genus contains five species.
!scope="col" style="width:15%; min-width:180px;"|Common name
!scope="col" style="width:25%;"|Scientific name and subspecies
!scope="col" style="width:15%; min-width:180px;"|Range
!scope
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!scope="row"|Andean goose
!scope="row"| Upland goose or Magellan goose
Male
Female
!scope="row"|Kelp goose
Male
Female
!scope="row"|Ashy-headed goose
!scope="row"|Ruddy-headed goose
References.
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