Booby

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For other uses, see Booby (disambiguation).

iBoobies

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Pelecaniformes
Family:	Sulidae
Genus:	Papasula Olsen & Warhett, 1988
Genus:	Sula Brisson, 1760

Species

Papasula abbotti

For fossil species, see text

The boobies are part of the family Sulidae, a group of seabirds closely related to gannets.

The boobies are large birds with long pointed wings and long bills. They hunt fish by diving from a height into the sea and pursuing their prey underwater. They have facial air sacs under their skin which cushion the impact with the water.

These are colonial breeders on islands and coasts, which normally lay one or more chalky blue eggs on the ground or sometimes in a tree nest. Their name is possibly based on the Spanish slang term bubi, meaning "dunce", as these tame birds had a habit of landing on board sailing ships where they were easily captured and eaten.

Owing to this, boobies are often mentioned to have been caught and eaten by shipwrecked sailors, notably Captain Bligh of HMAV Bounty and his loyalists during their famous voyage after being set adrift by Fletcher Christian and his mutineers.

1 Systematics and evolution
2 References
- 2.1 Footnotes
3 External links

[edit] Systematics and evolution

Five of the six extant booby species are in the genus Sula, with the sixth recently given its own genus Papasula, while the three gannets are usually treated in the genus Morus; some authorities consider that all nine species should be considered congeneric, in Sula. However, they are readily told apart by means of osteology, and the distinct lineages of gannets and boobies are known to have existed in such form for at least 3 million years.

The fossil record of boobies is not as well documented as that of gannets; possible reasons could be that booby species were less numerous in the late Miocene to Pliocene when gannets had their highest diversity, or that due to the more tropical distribution of boobies, many fossil species have simply not been found yet as most localities are in continental North America or Europe.

Genus Papasula

Abbott's Booby, Papasula abbotti

Genus Sula

Blue-footed Booby, Sula nebouxii
Peruvian Booby, Sula variegata
Masked Booby, Sula dactylatra
- Tasman Booby, Sula (dactylatra) tasmani (possibly extinct<ref>

This form poses major problems. Initially, it was described as an extinct species, but it seems nowadays that these individuals merely represent the largest birds of the Tasman Sea Masked Booby which was separated as the subspecies S. dactylatra fullagari. As tasmani had been described first, fullagari becomes a junior synonym if the extinct and the extant birds are considered to belong to the same taxon, which would thus be named S. d. tasmani (fide Holdaway & Anderson, 2001). If one assumes that the differences are not merely related to size, the extinct birds - which are certainly not a distinct species as initially believed - would be named S. d. tasmani (fide van Tets et al., 1988), and the extant subspecies would retain the name fullagari. There is sufficient material for DNA analyses to settle this question.</ref>)