The openbill storks or openbills are two

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

stork Storks are large, long-legged, long-necked wading birds with long, stout bills. They belong to the family Ciconiidae, and make up the order Ciconiiformes . Ciconiiformes previously included a number of other families, such as herons and ibise ...

(family Ciconiidae) in the

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

''Anastomus''. They are large wading

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

s characterized by large bills, the mandibles of which do not meet except at the tip. This feature develops only in the adults. Both species feed predominantly on

molluscs Mollusca is a phylum of protostome, protostomic invertebrate animals, whose members are known as molluscs or mollusks (). Around 76,000 extant taxon, extant species of molluscs are recognized, making it the second-largest animal phylum ...

. The roof of the upper bill is fringed with plate-like structures ("lamellae") in the African openbill, but these are absent in the Asian openbill.

Taxonomy

The

''Anastomus'' was erected by the French naturalist Pierre Bonnaterre in 1791. The

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

was subsequently designated as the Asian openbill (''Anastomus oscitans''). The name ''Anastomus'' is from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

αναστομοω ''anastomoō'' meaning "to furnish with a mouth" or "with mouth wide-opened". There are two species of openbilled storks:

References

* Taxa named by Pierre Joseph Bonnaterre {{Ciconiiformes-stub