''Antigone'' is a

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 ...

of large birds in the crane family. The species in this genus were formerly placed in the genus '' Grus''.

Taxonomy

The genus was named by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

to be used for the

sarus crane The sarus crane (''Antigone antigone'') is a large nonmigratory Crane (bird), crane found in parts of the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia, and northern Australia. The tallest of the flying birds, standing at a height of up to , they are a c ...

(known then by its Latin name ''Grus major Indica)'' because he confused the Greek princess Antigone of Troy, who turned into a

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 ...

, with Gerana, the

pygmy In anthropology, pygmy peoples are ethnic groups whose average height is unusually short. The term pygmyism is used to describe the phenotype of endemic short stature (as opposed to disproportionate dwarfism occurring in isolated cases in a po ...

queen, who turned into a crane. A

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study published in 2010 found that the genus '' Grus'' was

polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage that includes organisms with mixed evolutionary origin but does not include their most recent common ancestor. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as Homoplasy, homoplasies ...

. In the subsequent rearrangement four species were placed in the resurrected genus ''Antigone''. The genus had initially been erected in 1853 by German naturalist

Ludwig Reichenbach Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach (8 January 1793 – 17 March 1879) was a German botanist, ornithologist and illustrator. It was he who first requested Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, Leopold Blaschka to make a set of glass marine invertebrate m ...

. 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 ...

is the

(''Antigone antigone'').

Species

The genus includes four species:

References

External links

* * Bird genera Taxa named by Ludwig Reichenbach {{Gruiformes-stub