White Stork - Taxonomy and Evolution

Taxonomy and Evolution

The White Stork was one of the many bird species originally described by Linnaeus in the landmark 1758 10th edition of his Systema Naturae, where it was given the binomial name of Ardea ciconia. It was reclassified to (and was designated the type species of) the new genus Ciconia by French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. Both the genus and specific epithet, cǐcōnia, are the Latin word for "stork", originally recorded in the works of Horace and Ovid. The Latin word survives in most Romance languages (cicogna, cigüeña, cegonha and the like). The word stork is derived from the Old English word storc, and appeared in the tenth-century works the Erfurt Glossary, where the word is equated with Ciconia, and Aelfric's Homilies. The word is related to the Old High German storah, "stork", and similar words in many other European languages, all of which are descended from the Teutonic sturko-z.

There are two subspecies:

• C. c. ciconia, the nominate subspecies described by Linnaeus in 1758, breeds from Europe to northwest Africa and westernmost Asia, and in southern Africa, and winters mainly in Africa south of the Sahara Desert, though some birds winter in India.
• C. c. asiatica, described by Russian naturalist Nikolai Severtzov in 1873, breeds in Turkestan and winters from Iran to India. It is slightly larger than the nominate subspecies.

The stork family contains six genera in three broad groups: the open-billed and wood storks (Mycteria and Anastomus), the giant storks (Ephippiorhynchus, Jabiru and Leptoptilos), and the "typical" storks, Ciconia. The typical storks include the White Stork and six other extant species, which are characterised by straight pointed beaks and mainly black and white plumage. Its closest relatives are the larger, black-billed Oriental White Stork (Ciconia boyciana) of East Asia, which was formerly classified as a subspecies of the White Stork, and the Maguari Stork (C. maguari) of South America. Close evolutionary relationships within Ciconia are suggested by behavioural similarities and, biochemically, through analysis of both mitochondrial cytochrome b gene sequences and DNA-DNA hybridization.