Godwit

The godwits are a group of large, long-billed, long-legged and strongly migratory waders of the bird genus Limosa. Their long bills allow them to probe deeply in the sand for aquatic worms and molluscs. They frequent tidal shorelines, breeding in northern climates in summer and migrating south in winter. In their winter range, they flock together where food is plentiful. A female bar-tailed godwit holds the record for the longest non-stop flight for a land bird.[2]

For the New Zealand publishing company, see Godwit Press.
"Limosa" redirects here. For other uses, see Limosa (disambiguation).

Godwit
Temporal range: Barstovian-recent[1]
Black-tailed godwit
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Charadriiformes
Family: Scolopacidae
Subfamily: Tringinae
Genus: Limosa
Brisson, 1760
Type species
Scolopax limosa
Linnaeus, 1758
Species

4, see text.

They can be distinguished from the curlews by their straight or slightly upturned bills, and from the dowitchers by their longer legs. The winter plumages are fairly drab, but three species have reddish underparts when breeding. The females are appreciably larger than the males.

Godwits were once a popular British dish. Sir Thomas Browne writing in about 1682 noted that godwits "were accounted the daintiest dish in England".[3]

A flock of migratory waders, dominated by bar-tailed godwit

Taxonomy

The genus Limosa was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the black-tailed godwit (Limosa limosa) as the type species.[4][5] The genus name Limosa is from Latin and means "muddy", from limus, "mud".[6] The English name was first recorded in about 1416–17 and is believed to imitate the bird's call.[3]

The genus contains four species:[7]

Fossil species

In addition, there are two or three species of fossil prehistoric godwits. Limosa vanrossemi is known from the Monterey Formation (Late Miocene, approx. 6 mya) of Lompoc, United States. Limosa lacrimosa is known from the Early Pliocene of Western Mongolia (Kurochkin, 1985). Limosa gypsorum of the Late Eocene (Montmartre Formation, some 35 mya) of France may have actually been a curlew or some bird ancestral to both curlews and godwits (and possibly other Scolopacidae), or even a rail, being placed in the monotypic genus Montirallus by some (Olson, 1985). Certainly, curlews and godwits are rather ancient and in some respects primitive lineages of scolopacids, further complicating the assignment of such possibly basal forms.[8]

In a 2001 study comparing the ratios cerebrum to brain volumes in various dinosaur species, Hans C. E. Larsson found that more derived dinosaurs generally had proportionally more voluminous cerebrum.[9] Limosa gypsorum, then regarded as a Numenius species, was a discrepancy in this general trend.[10] L. gypsorum was only 63% of the way between a typical reptilian ratio and that of modern birds.[10] However, this may be explainable if the endocast was distorted, as it had been previously depicted in the past by Deschaseaux, who is described by Larsson as calling the endocast "slightly anteroposteriorly sheared and laterally compressed."[10]

gollark: PotatOS once made a CC emulator segfault.
gollark: unsafe.
gollark: It'll become possible with advances in technology, I suppose.
gollark: Well, by mentioning the game, you lost it too, so meh.
gollark: Maybe *you're* a Russian spy.

References
  1. "Limosa Brisson 1760 (godwit)". PBDB.
  2. Bird Completes Epic Flight Across The Pacific ScienceDaily.com
  3. "Godwit". Oxford English Dictionary (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. September 2005. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  4. Brisson, Mathurin Jacques (1760). Ornithologie, ou, Méthode Contenant la Division des Oiseaux en Ordres, Sections, Genres, Especes & leurs Variétés (in French and Latin). Paris: Jean-Baptiste Bauche. Vol. 1, p. 48, Vol. 5, p. 261.
  5. Peters, James Lee, ed. (1934). Check-list of Birds of the World. Volume 2. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. 263.
  6. Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 227. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  7. Gill, Frank; Donsker, David, eds. (2019). "Buttonquail, plovers, seedsnipe, sandpipers". World Bird List Version 9.1. International Ornithologists' Union. Archived from the original on 21 December 2018. Retrieved 3 April 2019.
  8. Thomas, Gavin H.; Wills, Matthew A.; Székely, Tamás (2004). "A supertree approach to shorebird phylogeny". BMC Evol. Biol. 4: 28. doi:10.1186/1471-2148-4-28. PMC 515296. PMID 15329156.
  9. "Allometric Comparison," in Larsson (2001). Pg. 27.
  10. "Allometric Comparison," in Larsson (2001). Pg. 30.

Sources
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