The dusky megapode (''Megapodius freycinet''), also known as dusky scrubfowl or common megapode, is a medium-sized, approximately 41 cm (16 in) long, blackish

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 ...

with a short pointed crest, bare red facial skin, dark legs, brown irises, and a dark brown and yellow bill. The male and female are similar. This terrestrial species lives in forests and swamps, including

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows mainly in coastal saline water, saline or brackish water. Mangroves grow in an equatorial climate, typically along coastlines and tidal rivers. They have particular adaptations to take in extra oxygen a ...

s, of the Maluku and

Raja Ampat Islands Raja Ampat (), or the Four Kings, is an archipelago located off of the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula (on the island of New Guinea), Southwest Papua , Southwest Papua province, Indonesia. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and sh ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania, between the Indian Ocean, Indian and Pacific Ocean, Pacific oceans. Comprising over List of islands of Indonesia, 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, ...

. Like other

megapode The megapodes, also known as incubator birds or mound-builders, are stocky, medium-large, chicken-like birds with small heads and large feet in the family Megapodiidae. Their name literally means "large foot" and is a reference to the heavy leg ...

s, it lays its eggs in a

mound A mound is a wikt:heaped, heaped pile of soil, earth, gravel, sand, rock (geology), rocks, or debris. Most commonly, mounds are earthen formations such as hills and mountains, particularly if they appear artificial. A mound may be any rounded ...

made from earth mixed with leaves, sand, gravel, and sticks, which can be as large as in diameter and stand nearly tall. Many authorities include the Biak scrubfowl as a

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

of this species, but the two are increasingly treated as separate species. At the same time, many authorities consider the

taxon In biology, a taxon (back-formation from ''taxonomy''; : taxa) is a group of one or more populations of an organism or organisms seen by taxonomists to form a unit. Although neither is required, a taxon is usually known by a particular name and ...

''M. forsteni'' a separate species, Forsten's megapode, but measurements and molecular evidence suggest the two are very close,Birks, S. M., & Edwards, S. V. (2002). ''A phylogeny of the megapodes (Aves: Megapodidae) based on nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences.'' Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 23: 408-421. and arguably better considered

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

. Traditionally, most members of 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 ...

'' Megapodius'' have been listed as subspecies of ''M. freycinet'', but today, all major authorities consider this to be incorrect. The specific name commemorates the French explorer Louis Claude Desaulses de Freycinet. A fairly common species throughout a large part of its range, the dusky scrubfowl is evaluated as

least concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

on the

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is an inventory of the global conservation status and extinction risk of biological ...

of Threatened Species.

References

Footnotes

Cited texts

External links

BirdLife Species Factsheet
dusky megapode Birds of the Maluku Islands Birds of West Papua dusky megapode Taxa named by Joseph Paul Gaimard {{galliformes-stub