''Tyto'' 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 ...

owl Owls are birds from the order Strigiformes (), which includes over 200 species of mostly solitary and nocturnal birds of prey typified by an upright stance, a large, broad head, binocular vision, binaural hearing, sharp talons, and feathers a ...

s in the family

Tytonidae The bird family Tytonidae, which includes the barn owls ''Tyto'' and the bay owls ''Phodilus'', is one of the two Family (biology), families of owls, the other being the true owls or typical owls, True owl, Strigidae. They are medium to large owl ...

. Depending on the species and the locality, common names include barn owl, common barn owl, grass owl, sooty owl, masked owl, field owl or simply owl. It is the most widely distributed genus of

s in the world and one of the most widespread of all genuses of birds, living almost everywhere except for

polar Polar may refer to: Geography * Geographical pole, either of the two points on Earth where its axis of rotation intersects its surface ** Polar climate, the climate common in polar regions ** Polar regions of Earth, locations within the polar circ ...

and

desert A desert is a landscape where little precipitation occurs and, consequently, living conditions create unique biomes and ecosystems. The lack of vegetation exposes the unprotected surface of the ground to denudation. About one-third of the la ...

regions, Asia north of the

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya ( ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the Earth's highest peaks, including the highest, Mount Everest. More than list of h ...

, some

Indonesian islands The islands of Indonesia, also known as the Indonesian Archipelago () or Nusantara, may refer either to the islands composing the country of Indonesia or to the geographical groups which include its islands. Indonesia is the world's largest ar ...

and some

Pacific Island The Pacific islands are a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean. They are further categorized into three major island groups: Melanesia, Micronesia, and Polynesia. Depending on the context, the term ''Pacific Islands'' may refer to one of several ...

s. The genus comprises three widespread continental species and many island species including the extinct island species. The widespread species comprise:

western barn owl The western barn owl (''Tyto alba'') is a species of Tyto, barn owl ''Tyto'' native to Europe, southwestern Asia, and Africa. It was formerly considered a subspecies group together with barn owls native to other parts of the world, but this clas ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

, western

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

and

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent after Asia. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 20% of Earth's land area and 6% of its total surfac ...

, the

eastern barn owl The eastern barn owl (''Tyto javanica'') is usually considered a subspecies group and together with the American barn owl group, the western barn owl group, and sometimes the Andaman masked owl make up the genus ''Tyto''. The cosmopolitan barn o ...

Southeast Asia Southeast Asia is the geographical United Nations geoscheme for Asia#South-eastern Asia, southeastern region of Asia, consisting of the regions that are situated south of China, east of the Indian subcontinent, and northwest of the Mainland Au ...

and

Australasia Australasia is a subregion of Oceania, comprising Australia, New Zealand (overlapping with Polynesia), and sometimes including New Guinea and surrounding islands (overlapping with Melanesia). The term is used in a number of different context ...

, and the

American barn owl The American barn owl (''Tyto furcata'') is usually considered a subspecies group and together with the western barn owl group, the eastern barn owl group, and sometimes the Andaman masked owl, make up the Tyto, barn owl, cosmopolitan in range. ...

of the Americas. However, some taxonomic authorities classify barn owls differently, and unify all continental barn owls in to one species. Further research is needed clarify the taxonomies. There is considerable variation of size and colour among the many species and sub-subspecies, but most are between in length, with wingspans ranging from . The plumage on the head and back is a mottled shade of grey or brown; that on the underparts varies from white to brown and is sometimes speckled with dark markings. The

facial disc In ornithology, the facial disc is the concave collection of feathers on the face of some birds—most notably owls—surrounding the eyes. The concavity of the facial disc forms a circular paraboloid that collects sound waves and directs those ...

is characteristically large and heart-shaped, with white plumage in most subspecies. This owl does not hoot, but utters an eerie, drawn-out screech. The species of this genus are nocturnal over most of its range, but in Great Britain and some Pacific Islands, it also hunts by day. Barn owls specialise in hunting animals on the ground, and nearly all of their food consists of small mammals, which they locate by sound, their hearing being very acute. The owls usually mate for life unless one of the pair is killed, whereupon a new pair bond may be formed. Breeding takes place at varying times of the year, according to the locality, with a clutch of eggs, averaging about four in number, being laid in a nest in a hollow tree, old building, or fissure in a cliff. The female does all the incubation, and she and the young chicks are reliant on the male for food. When large numbers of small prey are readily available, barn owl populations can expand rapidly, and globally the barn owl is listed

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 ...

. Some subspecies with restricted ranges are more threatened.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Tyto'' was introduced in 1828 by the Swedish naturalist

Gustaf Johan Billberg Gustaf Johan Billberg (14 June 1772, Karlskrona – 26 November 1844, Stockholm) was a Sweden, Swedish botanist, zoologist and anatomist, although professionally and by training he was a lawyer and used science and biology as an avocation. The pl ...

with the ''

Tyto alba The western barn owl (''Tyto alba'') is a species of barn owl ''Tyto'' native to Europe, southwestern Asia, and Africa. It was formerly considered a subspecies group together with barn owls native to other parts of the world, but this classifica ...

'' as 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 ...

. The name 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 ...

''tutō'' meaning "owl". The barn owl (''Tyto alba'') was formerly considered to have a global distribution with around 28 subspecies. In the list of birds maintained by Frank Gill,

Pamela Rasmussen Pamela Cecile Rasmussen (born October 16, 1959) is an American ornithology, ornithologist and expert on Asian birds. She was formerly a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and is based at the Michigan State Uni ...

and David Donsker on behalf of the

International Ornithological Committee The International Ornithologists' Union (IOU) is an international organization for the promotion of ornithology. It links basic and applied research and nurtures education and outreach activities. Specifically, the IOU organizes and funds global co ...

(IOC) the genus is now split into four species: the

(''Tyto alba'') (10 subspecies), the

(''Tyto furcata'') (12 subspecies), the

(''Tyto javanica'') (7 subspecies) and the

Andaman masked owl The Andaman masked owl (''Tyto deroepstorffi'') is a barn owl endemic to the southern Andaman Islands archipelago of India, in the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean.Bruce, M.D., Christie, D.A., Kirwan, G.M. & Marks, J.S. (2017). Common Barn-owl (''Tyto ...

(''Tyto deroepstorffi''). This arrangement is followed here. Support for this split was provided by 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 by Vera Uva and collaborators published in 2018 that compared the DNA sequences of three mitochondrial and one nuclear loci. This split was eventually adopted by other taxonomic authorities such as the

American Ornithological Society The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its ...

and the Clements Checklist of Birds of the World maintained by members of Cornell University in 2024, but has yet to be accepted by the list maintained by

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding i ...

that is used by the

International Union for Conservation of Nature The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the stat ...

. The cladogram below is based on the 2018 phylogenetic study. The

(''Tyto deroepstorffi'') and

Itombwe owl The Itombwe owl (''Tyto prigoginei'') is a species of owl in the barn owl family, Tytonidae. It is restricted to a small area in the Albertine Rift montane forests of east-central Africa. Taxonomy and systematics The Itombwe owl was first descr ...

(''Tyto prigoginei'') were not sampled. The

Manus masked owl The Manus masked owl (''Tyto manusi'') is a barn owl endemic to Manus Island in the Admiralty Islands The Admiralty Islands are an archipelago group of 40 islands in the Bismarck Archipelago, to the north of New Guinea in the South Pacific O ...

(''Tyto manusi'') was embedded in a clade with subspecies of the

Australian masked owl The Australian masked owl (''Tyto novaehollandiae''), also the Australasian masked owl or simply the masked owl, especially in Australia, is a barn owl of Southern New Guinea and the non-desert areas of Australia. Taxonomy Described subspecies ...

. Throughout their

evolution Evolution is the change in the heritable Phenotypic trait, characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. It occurs when evolutionary processes such as natural selection and genetic drift act on genetic variation, re ...

ary history, ''Tyto'' owls have shown a better capability to colonize islands than other owls. Several such island forms have become

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

, some long ago, but some in comparatively recent times. A number of insular barn owls from the

Mediterranean The Mediterranean Sea ( ) is a sea connected to the Atlantic Ocean, surrounded by the Mediterranean basin and almost completely enclosed by land: on the east by the Levant in West Asia, on the north by Anatolia in West Asia and Southern ...

and the

Caribbean The Caribbean ( , ; ; ; ) is a region in the middle of the Americas centered around the Caribbean Sea in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, mostly overlapping with the West Indies. Bordered by North America to the north, Central America ...

were very large or truly gigantic species.

Extant species

Seventeen species are recognized:

Extinct species

;Known from ancient

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

s: * ''Tyto sanctialbani'' (Middle - Late Miocene of Central Europe) - formerly in '' Strix''; includes ''T. campiterrae'' * '' Tyto robusta'' (Late Miocene/Early Pliocene of the Gargano Peninsula, Italy) * ''

Tyto gigantea ''Tyto gigantea'' is an extinct barn owl from what is now Gargano, Italy, dating back to the late Miocene. From its remains, ''T. gigantea'' is suggested to have been as large as or larger than the Eurasian eagle-owl (''Bubo bubo''). This speci ...

'' (Late Miocene/Early Pliocene of the Gargano Peninsula, Italy) * ''Tyto balearica'' (Late Miocene - Middle Pleistocene of the west-central Mediterranean) * '' Tyto mourerchauvireae'' (Middle Pleistocene of Sicily, Mediterranean) * ''Tyto jinniushanensis'' (Pleistocene of Jing Niu Shan, China) *''Tyto maniola'' – Cuban Dwarf Barn Owl (Late Pleistocene of Cuba) * ''Tyto'' sp. 1 * ''Tyto'' sp. 2 ;Late prehistoric extinctions usually known from

subfossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserved ...

remains:

* Mussau barn owl (''Tyto'' cf. ''novaehollandiae'') found in

Mussau Mussau Island is the largest island of St Matthias Islands, Papua New Guinea,Müller, Chris J. "Butterflies of Mussau Island (Lepidoptera: Rhopalocera)." ''A Rapid Biodiversity Survey of Papua New Guinea’s Manus and Mussau Islands'' (2015): 21. ...

Steadman (2006) * New Ireland greater barn owl (''Tyto'' cf. ''novaehollandiae'') found in New Ireland * New Ireland lesser barn owl (''Tyto'' cf. ''alba/aurantiaca'') found in New Ireland *

New Caledonian barn owl The New Caledonian barn owl (''Tyto letocarti''), also referred to as Letocart's barn owl, is an extinct species of owl in the barn owl family. It was endemic to the island of New Caledonia in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific region. I ...

(''Tyto letocarti'') found in

New Caledonia New Caledonia ( ; ) is a group of islands in the southwest Pacific Ocean, southwest of Vanuatu and east of Australia. Located from Metropolitan France, it forms a Overseas France#Sui generis collectivity, ''sui generis'' collectivity of t ...

- tentatively placed here * Puerto Rican barn owl (''Tyto cavatica'') found in

Puerto Rico ; abbreviated PR), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, is a Government of Puerto Rico, self-governing Caribbean Geography of Puerto Rico, archipelago and island organized as an Territories of the United States, unincorporated territo ...

- may still have existed up to 1912; possibly a subspecies of the

ashy-faced owl The ashy-faced owl (''Tyto glaucops'') is a species of bird in the barn-owl family Tytonidae. It is found on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola, on Dominica, and on several other islands of the Lesser Antilles. Taxonomy and systematics The ash ...

(''Tyto glaucops'') * Noel's barn owl (''Tyto noeli'') found in Cuba * Rivero's barn owl (''Tyto riveroi'') found in Cuba * Cuban barn owl (''Tyto'' sp.) found in Cuba * Hispaniolan barn owl (''Tyto ostologa'') found in

Hispaniola Hispaniola (, also ) is an island between Geography of Cuba, Cuba and Geography of Puerto Rico, Puerto Rico in the Greater Antilles of the Caribbean. Hispaniola is the most populous island in the West Indies, and the second-largest by List of C ...

* Bahaman barn owl (''

Tyto pollens ''Tyto pollens'' is an extinct giant owl which lived in the Bahamas during the last Ice Age. Description It is only known from the partial remains of three individuals which have been collected on the islands of Little Exuma (the site was misid ...

'') found in Little Exuma,

New Providence New Providence is the most populous island in The Bahamas, containing more than 70% of the total population. On the eastern side of the island is the national capital, national capital city of Nassau, Bahamas, Nassau; it had a population of 246 ...

, and maybe

Andros Island Andros is an archipelago in The Bahamas, the largest of the Bahamian Islands. Politically considered a single island, Andros in total has an area greater than all the other 700 Bahamian islands combined. The land area of Andros consists of hun ...

, the

Bahamas The Bahamas, officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas, is an archipelagic and island country within the Lucayan Archipelago of the Atlantic Ocean. It contains 97 per cent of the archipelago's land area and 88 per cent of its population. ...

- may have survived into the 16th century * Barbuda barn owl (''Tyto neddi'') found in Barbuda and possibly Antigua * Maltese barn owl (''Tyto melitensis'') found in Malta - formerly in '' Strix''; possibly a

paleosubspecies A chronospecies is a species derived from a sequential development pattern that involves continual and uniform changes from an extinct ancestral form on an evolutionary scale. The sequence of alterations eventually produces a population that is p ...

of ''Tyto alba''

Former species

A number of owl fossils were at one time assigned to the present genus, but are nowadays placed elsewhere. While there are clear differences in

osteology Osteology () is the scientific study of bones, practiced by osteologists . A subdiscipline of anatomy, anthropology, archaeology and paleontology, osteology is the detailed study of the structure of bones, skeletal elements, teeth, microbone mo ...

between typical owls and barn owls, there has been

parallel evolution Parallel evolution is the similar development of a trait in distinct species that are not closely related, but share a similar original trait in response to similar evolutionary pressure.Zhang, J. and Kumar, S. 1997Detection of convergent and pa ...

to some degree and thus isolated fossil bones cannot necessarily be assigned to either family without thorough study. Notably, the genus '' Strix'' has been misapplied by many early scientists as a "

wastebasket taxon Wastebasket taxon (also called a wastebin taxon, dustbin taxon or catch-all taxon) is a term used by some taxonomists to refer to a taxon that has the purpose of classifying organisms that do not fit anywhere else. They are typically defined by e ...

" for many owls, including ''Tyto''. * ''Tyto antiqua'' (Late Eocene/Early Oligocene of Quercy? - Early Miocene of France) was a barn owl of the prehistoric genus '' Prosybris''; this

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 ...

might be a ''

nomen nudum In Taxonomy (biology), taxonomy, a ''nomen nudum'' ('naked name'; plural ''nomina nuda'') is a designation which looks exactly like a scientific name of an organism, and may have originally been intended to be one, but it has not been published ...

'', as the species was originally described in ''Strix'', this requires confirmation * ''Tyto edwardsi'' (Late Miocene of Grive-Saint-Alban, France) was a strigid owl, but has not yet been reliably identified to a genus; it might belong in ''Strix'' or the European ''

Ninox ''Ninox'' is a genus of true owls comprising 36 species found in Asia and Australasia. Many species are known as hawk-owls or boobooks, but the northern hawk-owl (''Surnia ulula'') is not a member of this genus. Taxonomy The genus was introduce ...

''-like group. * ''Tyto ignota'' (Middle Miocene of Sansan, France) was a strigid owl of unclear affinities; while it might belong into ''Strix'', this requires confirmationMlíkovský (2002) * "TMT 164", a distal left

tarsometatarsus The tarsometatarsus is a bone that is only found in the lower leg of birds and some non-avian dinosaurs. It is formed from the fusion of several bird bones found in other types of animals, and homologous to the mammalian tarsus (ankle bones) a ...

of a supposed ''Tyto'' from the Middle Miocene Grive-Saint-Alban (France); might also belong in ''Prosybris'', as it is similar to ''Tyto antiqua''Ballmann (1969)

Description

They are darker on the back than the front, usually an orange-brown colour, the front being a paler version of the back or mottled, although there is considerable variation even amongst species. ''Tyto'' owls have a divided, heart-shaped facial disc, and lack the ear-like tufts of feathers found in many other owls. ''Tyto'' owls tend to be larger than bay owls. The name ''tyto (τυτώ)'' is

onomatopeic Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

Greek for owl.

Footnotes

References

* Ballmann, Peter (1969). Les Oiseaux miocènes de la Grive-Saint-Alban (Isère)

he Miocene birds of Grive-Saint-Alban (Isère) He or HE may refer to: Language * He (letter), the fifth letter of the Semitic abjads * He (pronoun), a pronoun in Modern English * He (kana), one of the Japanese kana (へ in hiragana and ヘ in katakana) * Ge (Cyrillic), a Cyrillic letter call ...

Geobios Geobios is an academic journal published bimonthly by the publishing house Elsevier. Geobios is an international journal of paleontology, focusing on the areas of palaeobiology, palaeoecology, palaeobiogeography, stratigraphy and biogeochemistry ...

'' 2: 157–204. rench with English abstract (HTML abstract) * Bruce, M.D. (1999). Family Tytonidae (Barn-owls). ''In:'' del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A. & Sargatal, J. (eds): ''

Handbook of Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. ...

'' Vol. 5 (Barn-owls to Hummingbirds): 34–75, plates 1–3. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. * Mlíkovský, Jirí (2002). ''Cenozoic Birds of the World, Part 1: Europe''. Ninox Press, Prague. PDF fulltext
* Olson, Storrs L. (1985). Section IX.C. Strigiformes. ''In:'' Farner, D.S.; King, J.R. & Parkes, Kenneth C. (eds.): ''Avian Biology'' 8: 129–132. Academic Press, New York. * Steadman, David William (2006). ''Extinction and Biogeography of Tropical Pacific Birds''. University of Chicago Press. .

External links

* * {{Authority control Bird genera Extant Miocene first appearances