Animal Diversity Web

Di­ver­sity

Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae con­sists of 3 ex­tant gen­era and 6 ex­tant species. The first genus, Phoeni­copterus, con­tains 3 species: Amer­i­can flamin­gos (Phoeni­copterus ruber), greater flamin­gos (Phoeni­copterus roseus), and Chilean flamin­gos (Phoeni­copterus chilen­sis). Genus Phoeni­co­par­rus con­tains two species: puna flamin­gos (Phoeni­co­par­rus jamesi) and An­dean flamin­gos (Phoeni­co­par­rus and­i­nus). The third genus, Phoeni­cona­ias, con­tains lesser flamin­gos (Phoeni­cona­ias minor). Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae are found glob­ally in warm coastal areas. Dis­tinct fea­tures of Phoeni­copteri­dae are their long legs and webbed feet, as well as the dif­fer­ent shades of pink their feath­ers con­tain. The most rec­og­niz­able species is Phoeni­copterus ruber, com­monly known as the Amer­i­can flamingo due to its large size and bright pink col­oration (Mayr, 2004; Rose, 2014). (Mayr, 2004; Rose, 2014)

Ge­o­graphic Range

Greater flamin­gos (P. roseus) are found on the south­ern and east­ern coasts of the Ethiopian re­gion, with some in­di­vid­u­als hav­ing been found more in­land as well. They are also found within the south­ern and south­west­ern parts of the Palearc­tic re­gion. Lesser flamin­gos (P. minor) are found all over the coasts of the Ethiopian re­gion. Caribbean flamin­gos (P. ruber) are found all over the is­lands in the north­ern sec­tion of the Neotrop­i­cal re­gion. Chilean flamin­gos (P. chilen­sis), An­dean flamin­gos (P. and­i­nus), and Puna flamin­gos (P. jamesi) are found in the south­ern and south­west­ern parts of the Neotrop­i­cal re­gion with some in­di­vid­u­als hav­ing been found more in­land as well (Paul, 2021). (Paul, 2021)

• Biogeographic Regions
• palearctic
  • native
• oriental
  • native
• ethiopian
  • native
• neotropical
  • introduced

Habi­tat

Due to the na­ture of fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae and their food sources they re­quire ac­cess to stand­still water to feed. Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae gen­er­ally oc­cupy trop­i­cal coastal re­gions in order to sus­tain large flocks. The most reg­u­larly oc­cu­pied habi­tats are large lakes. There is some spe­cial­iza­tion within the fam­ily, Lesser flamin­gos Phoeni­cona­ias minor gen­er­ally like undis­turbed al­ka­line lakes and salt pans. An­dean flamingo Phoeni­co­par­rus and­i­nus also gen­er­ally likes al­ka­line lakes and salt lakes but at an el­e­va­tion be­tween 2300-4500m. Puna flamingo Phoeni­co­par­rus jamesi also fol­lows the trend and gen­er­ally oc­cu­pies saline lakes in the high An­dean plateaus. The other 3 re­main­ing species are less spe­cial­ized and oc­cupy more coastal and ma­rine wet­lands (Paul, 2021). (Paul, 2021)

• Habitat Regions
• tropical
• terrestrial
• saltwater or marine
• freshwater

• Terrestrial Biomes
• savanna or grassland

• Aquatic Biomes
• lakes and ponds
• rivers and streams
• coastal

• Wetlands
• marsh
• swamp

• Other Habitat Features
• estuarine

Sys­tem­atic and Tax­o­nomic His­tory

The cur­rent un­der­stand­ing of fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae is that there has not been a name change at the fam­ily, gen­era, or species level.

There are a few syn­onyms in Lesser flamin­gos Phoeni­cona­ias minor, An­dean flamin­gos Phoeni­co­par­rus and­i­nus, and James's flamin­gos Phoeni­co­par­rus jamesi. These syn­onyms con­sider all of the species listed pre­vi­ously to also be in the genus Phoeni­copterus. (ITIS - Phoeni­copteri­dae Re­port 2022).

Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae Bona­parte, 1831

Genus Phoeni­cona­ias G. R. Gray, 1869

Lesser Flamingo

Species Phoeni­cona­ias minor É. Ge­of­froy Saint-Hi­laire, 1798

Genus Phoeni­co­par­rus Bona­parte, 1856

An­dean Flamingo

Species Phoeni­co­par­rus and­i­nus Philippi, 1854

James’s Flamingo

Species Phoeni­co­par­rus jamesi P. L. Sclater, 1886

Genus Phoeni­copterus Lin­naeus, 1758

Amer­i­can Flamingo

Species Phoeni­copterus ruber Lin­naeus, 1758

Chilean Flamingo

Species Phoeni­copterus chilen­sis Molina, 1782

Greater Flamingo

Species Phoeni­copterus roseus Pal­las, 1811

("ITIS - Phoeni­copteri­dae Re­port", 2022)

• Synonyms

  • Phoenicopterus jamesi P. L. Sclater, 1886
  • Phoenicopterus andinus Philippi, 1854
  • Phoenicopterus minor É. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1798

Phys­i­cal De­scrip­tion

Through­out all the species of flamin­gos they are very sim­i­lar. Some dis­tinct char­ac­ter­is­tics are long thin legs, bright pink col­oration, and a neck that is able to bend in curves in dif­fer­ent di­rec­tions. Males and fe­males are gen­er­ally sim­i­lar but males tend to be big­ger in size while fe­males are smaller size. Al­though fe­males tend to get their pink color sooner than males. Be­sides those dif­fer­ences, males and fe­males do not dif­fer.

Greater flamin­gos Phoeni­copterus roseus have a slight ex­pec­ta­tion with their lighter color feath­ers and their darker/ brighter col­ors being on the ends of the wings. Caribbean flamin­gos Phoeni­copterus ruber are sim­i­lar in size and shape but are more the clas­sic bright pink/ red col­ors all over the body. Chilean flamin­gos Phoeni­copterus chilen­sis is the small­est body size of those de­scribed so far, but has the most di­verse plumage col­oration abil­i­ties. Chilean Flamin­gos plumage col­oration can be a mix­ture of black, red, smoky pink, and salmon pink. The most dis­tin­guish­ing fea­ture of this species is the bright pink an­kles they pos­sess. An­dean flamin­gos Phoeni­co­par­rus and­i­nus are unique in the sense that they have yel­low legs and dur­ing mat­ing sea­son its chest feath­ers turn a shade of pur­ple/ pink color. An­other unique char­ac­ter trait that is also shared with an­other species is An­dean flamin­gos lack a hind toe. Puna Flamin­gos Phoeni­co­par­rus jamesi are smaller than the An­dean flamingo, more sim­i­lar in size to the lesser flamin­gos. A defin­ing char­ac­ter­is­tic is their yel­low bill with a black tip, nick­named the "ba­nana beak flamingo". They also have bright red scapu­lar feath­ers that ex­tend over their wings, and have or­ange-like legs. Lesser flamin­gos Phoeni­cona­ias minor are only lesser in the sense that they have the small­est body size out of all the species of flamin­gos (Paul 2021).

Younger flamin­gos dif­fer in size and have lit­tle to no color until closer to adult­hood. Flamin­gos get their bright pink color that they are known for from their diet. With the con­sump­tion of krill and other small or­gan­isms they are able to ob­tain their bright col­ors. (Paul, 2021)

• Other Physical Features
• endothermic
• bilateral symmetry

• Sexual Dimorphism
• sexes alike
• male larger

Re­pro­duc­tion

Since fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae are very so­cial birds, an in­tri­cate courtship dis­play is im­por­tant to find a mate. There is a ten­dency for male courtship dis­plays to be less in­tense com­pared to those of their fe­male coun­ter­parts.

There are var­i­ous move­ments that can go into a courtship dis­play, not every species or in­di­vid­u­als do the same move­ments. The gen­eral first move­ment that sig­nals the be­gin­ning of courtship for the whole flock is what's called head flag­ging. Gen­er­ally started by the tallest in­di­vid­u­als in each flock (most of the time males) this move­ment con­sists of a stiff neck while the head moves side to side. Best de­scribed as a wav­ing mo­tion. This is seen in all mem­bers of fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae, but Puna flamin­gos Phoeni­co­par­rus jamesi have dis­played a more ex­ag­ger­ated move­ment com­pared to other species in the fam­ily. Some species show more in­tri­cate dis­plays, An­dean flamin­gos Phoeni­co­par­rus and­i­nus have a syn­chro­nized march while head-flag­ging. Lesser flamin­gos Phoeni­cona­ias minor also have some sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics to the An­dean flamingo, but while march­ing they also may dis­play what looks like a bro­ken neck. The mo­tion of the "bro­ken neck" is when the beak is brought to the base of the neck mak­ing a large bend. Due to the large size of flocks there tends to be some squab­bling and joust­ing within the flock (Paul 2021).

Head-flag­ging is not the only courtship dis­play that oc­curs. There are 3 var­i­ous dif­fer­ent leg and wing move­ments that go along with try­ing to flag down a mate but do not all occur in each species. The three dif­fer­ent move­ments start with ex­tend­ing both sides of the wings in a move called the "wing salute". The sec­ond move­ment is a "in­verted wing solute" when the wings are stretched out in a for­ward mo­tion. The last move­ment is a dis­play of both legs and wings, when one of the wings stretches out cor­re­spond­ing to the side with the al­ready ex­tended leg ("wing leg stretch") (Paul 2021).

Fe­male flamin­gos have a ten­dency to use the in­verted wing solute move over the other move­ments, but Puna flamin­gos tend not to use this move at all. While Chilean flamin­gos Phoeni­copterus chilen­sis seem to pre­fer the wing leg stretch move­ment and An­dean flamin­gos have a more stiff and rigid wing solute. In­tense vo­cal­iza­tion from both males and fe­males also oc­curs at the same time as the courtship that is passed back and forth be­tween sexes (Paul 2021).

The spe­cific mech­a­nisms that cause the match­ing of part­ners is still un­known. But a com­bi­na­tion of color, size, mat­ing dis­plays, and age all play a role in the se­lec­tion of mates. (Paul, 2021)

• Mating System
• monogamous

None of the species within fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae has a spe­cific sea­son of breed­ing that is ex­plic­itly found in the lit­er­a­ture, but there are some gen­eral trends that all the species fol­low. All the species gen­er­ally fol­low the trend that the flock breeds to­gether at the same time. This tim­ing is gen­er­ally in the warmer sea­son that has a good to heavy amount of rain­fall but is not lim­ited to this sea­son/time.

Once part­ners are picked through the fledg­ling courtship process mat­ing can occur. The gen­eral be­hav­ior for mat­ing is the fe­male ini­ti­ates the ac­tion by walk­ing away from the larger group and low­ers her head and spreads her wings in order for the male to mount her. Mount­ing oc­curs in shal­low water. The tim­ing be­tween mat­ing and the lay­ing of eggs is not de­scribed in the lit­er­a­ture. Post mat­ing each cou­ple starts to build their mound for their chick(s). This takes place about 6 weeks be­fore the eggs are laid and while in­cu­ba­tion oc­curs, nor­mally one egg is laid but there have been re­ports of 2 eggs as well.("Re­pro­duc­tion" 2022).

Due to how much parental care and how en­er­get­i­cally in­volved both par­ents must be to raise a young they gen­er­ally only mate once a year. It takes about 28-32 days for eggs to hatch into chicks. The ma­ture re­pro­duc­tion age is gen­er­ally re­ported across the lit­er­a­ture to be about 3 years for males and 3-5 years for fe­males (Meziani 2011, Paul 2021). (Meziani, 2011; Paul, 2021; "Re­pro­duc­tion", 2022)

• Key Reproductive Features
• iteroparous
• year-round breeding
• gonochoric/gonochoristic/dioecious (sexes separate)
• sexual
• oviparous
• sperm-storing

The parental in­vest­ment for all of fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae is very sim­i­lar, flamin­gos are very de­vout par­ents, there is not an off­spring pro­duced an­nu­ally. When a strong con­nec­tion is made be­tween male and fe­male they max­i­mize the chances of suc­cess for their young by at­ten­tively car­ing to the off­spring. There is gen­er­ally a long time pe­riod for the young to be able to live in­de­pen­dently. There is a large com­mit­ment of parental in­vest­ment be­tween pre-hatch­ing and tak­ing care of the fledg­ling.

If the wet-land en­vi­ron­ment is neg­a­tively im­pacted by any means such as dry­ing up or harm­ful degra­da­tion by human ac­tions then there will most likely be a wide­spread loss of chicks and fledg­lings which will pause mat­ing for what could be up to years be­fore mat­ing com­mences again.

Pre-fer­til­iza­tion/ Pre-hatch­ing:

Both males and fe­males play a role de­cid­ing a place for their mound (where they lay their eggs) within the nest­ing colony they are a part of. Both par­ents also play a role in build­ing the mound, the mound is in the shape of a turned over bucket. There is a shared duty be­tween both par­ents to in­cu­bate the young.

Pre-wean­ing/ Fledg­ling:

The large parental in­vest­ment is con­tin­ued by both par­ents hav­ing to di­rect the fledg­ling di­rectly. For about the first week the off­spring are pro­tected in­side the mound, the next 3 months the young are learn­ing for­ag­ing skills and so­cial be­hav­iors. While de­vel­op­ing those skills this is when the par­ents man­u­ally feed by fledg­lings di­rectly into its mouth.

Once the chicks are around 9 months to a year their par­ents start to pro­vide a sub­stance that is high in nu­tri­tion and helps for rapid growth in chicks, and has a high carotenoid con­tent (what stains the feath­ers pink). This sub­stance is called "crop milk", a ses­sion of pro­vid­ing crop milk can last up to 20 min­utes. Crop milk is gen­er­ally a red/ pink color and is an­other high in­vest­ment and en­ergy ac­tion pro­vided to the chicks by the par­ents. An adap­ta­tion that is seen in flamin­gos is their sight has to be very par­tic­u­lar to be able to see ends of their bills to give chicks crop milk. This adap­ta­tion has also been honed to a high level since a ses­sion of pro­vided crop milk can last up to 20 min­utes as stated ear­lier. An­other adap­ta­tion that ac­com­pa­nies the fo­cus­ing eye­sight is the au­di­tory queue that trig­gers the se­cre­tion of crop milk. This queue comes from the chick's be­gin­ning cry as well as the con­stant pes­ter­ing the chick has on the adults (Paul 2021, Meziani 2011). (Meziani, 2011; Paul, 2021)

• Parental Investment
• altricial
• male parental care
• female parental care
• pre-fertilization
  • provisioning
  • protecting
    • male
    • female
• pre-hatching/birth
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
    • female
• pre-weaning/fledging
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
    • female
• pre-independence
  • provisioning
    • male
    • female
  • protecting
    • male
    • female

Lifes­pan/Longevity

The lifes­pan for fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae is gen­er­ally the same for all species. The chicks have a lower sur­vival rate com­pared to the adults, due to the chicks re­ly­ing on the par­ents for food, nu­tri­tion and pro­tec­tion until adult­hood. Once an in­di­vid­ual has reached adult­hood the av­er­age lifes­pan is about 25-35 years in the wild (Paul 2021, Per­rot et al. 2016). In cap­tiv­ity the av­er­age lifes­pan is in­creased to 30-40 years with a max around 50 years old (Brad­ford 2014). (Brad­ford, 2014; "Longevity and cause of death", 2022; Paul, 2021; Per­rot, et al., 2016)

Be­hav­ior

All the species within Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae are very so­cial an­i­mals. They group up in large flocks that can con­tain thou­sands of birds but have a smaller av­er­age for most species. Flock­ing is a pro­tec­tive mech­a­nism that is used by a va­ri­ety of dif­fer­ent species of an­i­mals. It is used to be able to alert a large num­ber of in­di­vid­u­als of a preda­tor, flamin­gos have adapted this well since a ma­jor­ity of their time is at the water line feed­ing or rest­ing next to their body. There are many sub­tle move­ments or place­ments of body parts that con­vey mes­sages to oth­ers.

When it comes to breed­ing there are many dif­fer­ent move­ments re­lated to show­ing off or threat­en­ing other in­di­vid­u­als who are also try­ing to mate. For breed­ing it was also ob­served that the larger the flock size the more re­pro­duc­tive suc­cess there is, even when the flock is en­larged ar­ti­fi­cially by mir­rors (Meziani 2011). Breed­ing flocks of a hand­ful of in­di­vid­u­als is very rare, only seen in cap­tiv­ity.

Gen­eral move­ments like rest­ing an in­di­vid­ual's head on the left side of their body send a sig­nal to oth­ers that they are more likely to get into an al­ter­ca­tion but this has not been proven in the lit­er­a­ture. This might be part of a so­cial hi­er­ar­chy or for com­pe­ti­tion for re­pro­duc­tive part­ners. Even though flamin­gos are very so­cial colo­nial an­i­mals when it comes to food and for­ag­ing grounds they are very ter­ri­to­r­ial. An in­di­vid­ual can claim their ter­ri­tory and will de­fend it from all oth­ers with large dis­plays of their body by fully stretch­ing out their wings and neck to look as big as pos­si­ble. If the in­truder(s) do not re­ceive the mes­sage and do not leave then a phys­i­cal al­ter­ca­tion called "bill fenc­ing" can occur. Bill fenc­ing is when two in­di­vid­u­als bite at each other's beak in order to dis­play dom­i­nance over the other. This ter­ri­to­ri­al­ity can also occur when pro­tect­ing areas with young chicks dur­ing breed­ing.

As a flock there will be se­lect areas that will be more com­mu­nal and open to every­one un­like for­ag­ing/ feed­ing ter­ri­to­ries. One of these areas is the fresh­wa­ter lo­ca­tion(s), due to their diet there is a large amount of sodium that is taken in and fresh water is needed to bal­ance out said salt. This fresh­wa­ter lo­ca­tion is also the start for breed­ing rit­u­als, once the flock has started breed­ing then an­other lo­ca­tion will be se­lected for eggs to be laid and mounds to be built.

One of flamin­gos biggest be­hav­ioral char­ac­ter­is­tics is their gen­eral stance of stand­ing on one leg. When an in­di­vid­ual is stand­ing on one leg they have one fully ex­tended sub­merged in the water while the other is bent at the knee and tucked un­der­neath the body. There seems to be no pref­er­ence on which leg is sub­merged in the water ver­sus tucked under the body, and there is not any proven the­ory in the lit­er­a­ture of why they stand on one leg. But some of the the­o­ries are to re­duce loss of body heat by only hav­ing one leg being sub­merged in the water or that it re­duces the par­a­site con­tact they may come in con­tact with in the water.

Their flight be­hav­ior is sim­i­lar to geese in the sense of colo­nial for­ma­tion fly­ing and honk­ing noises in order to com­mu­ni­cate. They fly with their neck fully ex­tended to the front of their body with their feet stretched out to­wards the back. Their range for flight is hun­dreds of miles if needed but gen­er­ally stay in a lo­cal­ized area (Meziani 2011, Paul 2021, Be­hav­ior 2022).

In­di­vid­ual be­hav­ior:

An in­di­vid­ual who is not cur­rently breed­ing will spend most of their time preen­ing and rest­ing. Their preen­ing is gen­er­ally higher than other wa­ter­fowls with flamin­gos spend­ing up­wards of 35% of their time preen­ing com­pared to 10% of other wa­ter­fowls (Be­hav­ior 2022). They will also for­age for food later in the day or at night. For an in­di­vid­ual who is breed­ing or has an off­spring will dras­ti­cally re­duce their preen­ing time in order to take care of the young. They will also for­age and feed more dur­ing the day to make sure the young have enough nu­tri­tion. ("Be­hav­ior", 2022; Meziani, 2011; Paul, 2021)

• Key Behaviors
• flies
• diurnal
• nocturnal
• motile
• sedentary
• social
• colonial

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Per­cep­tion

Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae is a very so­cial group of birds with their large flocks that could con­tain thou­sands, com­mu­ni­ca­tion is es­sen­tial for the safety of the flock but also for com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween mates and off­spring. Flamin­gos com­mu­ni­cate through vo­cal­iza­tion while fly­ing which has been ob­served to sound sim­i­lar to geese, these loud vo­cal­iza­tions are used in order to com­mu­ni­cate land­ing and di­rec­tion in­struc­tions. While on land they also use vo­cal­iza­tion to com­mu­ni­cate but with a re­duced vol­ume. An im­por­tant part of im­print­ing a chick is hear­ing the chick's unique vo­cal­iza­tion pat­terns while they are still in the egg. This is needed in order to re­turn to the chick once it's hatched to bring it food.

Adults use phys­i­cal move­ments more com­pared to those of chicks. Even the most sub­tle move­ments can mean some­thing to an­other in­di­vid­ual, some­thing as easy as which side of your body does you head lie on can cause a vocal and phys­i­cal al­ter­ca­tion. A more rec­og­nized phys­i­cal move­ment is the ruf­fling of feath­ers which can be com­pared to the hair on the back of a cat ris­ing up when it's threat­ened. This ruf­fling of feath­ers makes the bird look larger in order to make the op­po­nent stand down. If fur­ther ac­tion is needed then an in­di­vid­ual can move their head in an ag­gres­sive fash­ion as well as mak­ing a click­ing noise by quickly open­ing and clos­ing the beak. If these warn­ings are ig­nored they may get into an al­ter­ca­tion called bill fenc­ing.

Flamin­gos use phys­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion when it comes to mat­ing. Their mat­ing rit­u­als are mostly dri­ven by phys­i­cal courtship dis­plays, fe­males will mir­ror the males move­ments when she has cho­sen.

There is no cur­rent ev­i­dence in the lig­a­ture or oth­er­wise that flamin­gos use any chem­i­cal or pheromones for com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Sim­i­lar to most other large Avians, flamin­gos lis­ten to their en­vi­ron­ment through au­di­tory, tac­tile, vi­sual and chem­i­cal sig­nals (Meziani 2011, Paul 2021). (Meziani, 2011; Paul, 2021)

• Communication Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic

• Other Communication Modes
• choruses

• Perception Channels
• visual
• tactile
• acoustic
• chemical

Food Habits

Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae use many of their unique adap­ta­tions for their for­ag­ing of food. They use their long legs to stir up the sed­i­ment in the shal­low wa­ters mix­ing up many dif­fer­ent op­tions for food. Flamin­gos are not too se­lec­tive when it comes to their diet, through the ex­am­i­na­tion of wild flamin­gos stom­achs they ap­pear to eat bac­te­ria, mi­croor­gan­isms, worms, ne­ma­todes, mol­lusks, crus­taceans, in­sects, lar­vae, and even some small ver­te­brates like small fish. They also con­sume some plant mat­ter in forms of algae pri­mar­ily. They have a wide range of avail­able diets but the small crus­taceans are what is re­spon­si­ble for the bright pink color. The crus­taceans have a carotenoid com­pound which then gets mixed into the skin and feath­ers of the flamin­gos. With­out these crus­taceans in their diet they will slowly be­come paler (but still healthy) and re­sem­ble other wild birds in terms of pale col­oration.

Flamin­gos bills are highly spe­cial­ized for fil­ter feed­ing. Their bills have thin bony pro­jec­tions that line the in­side of their mouth in order to act as a fil­ter­ing sys­tem. Flamin­gos then take in a mouth full of water and move its tongue and beak to pump out water. Its spe­cial­ized bill re­moves water and leaves tiny or­gan­isms in order to eat. Due to how they dip their head into the water to fil­ter they are es­sen­tially eat­ing up­side down due the mor­phol­ogy of the beak. The bot­tom bill is spoon shaped while there is an ar­tic­u­la­tion of the joint in the upper jaw. Like in other ver­te­brates the upper jaw is free to move while eat­ing, so when the flamin­gos are up­side down it looks sim­i­lar in func­tion to other ver­te­brate mouths (Meziani 2011). (Meziani, 2011)

• Primary Diet
• carnivore
  • eats non-insect arthropods

• Foraging Behavior
• filter-feeding

Pre­da­tion

Most species within fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae don't have a large amount of preda­tors due to their semi large size and large flocks they gather in (Brad­ford 2014). The ma­jor­ity of their preda­tors are other birds which tar­get the eggs of flamin­gos. The re­mote and odd lo­ca­tions of breed­ing limit the pre­da­tion of ter­res­trial an­i­mals ("Longevity and Cause of Death" 2022). How­ever, there has been re­ported pre­da­tion from big cats and other ter­res­trial scav­engers. (Brad­ford, 2014; "Longevity and cause of death", 2022)

• Known Predators

  • Vultures, Eagles, and other avian scavengers
  • Leopards, Jackals, and other large cats

Ecosys­tem Roles

Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae does not gen­er­ally have a large im­pact on the ecosys­tem, at least not that is men­tioned in the lit­er­a­ture. Adult flamin­gos lo­co­mo­tion gen­er­ally mixes up their en­vi­ron­ment due to the na­ture of the ecosys­tem they are in. Since they are gen­er­ally in shal­low lakes or more muddy areas their move­ment mixes the sed­i­ments in the ground. Their diet is from small aquatic in­ver­te­brates and crus­taceans which is stirred up by their move­ment and mix­ing of the ground lay­ers. This move­ment of sed­i­ments might also have an ef­fect of ox­i­da­tion of the en­vi­ron­ment but there have not been any di­rect stud­ies on this yet.

Young flamin­gos and hatch­lings are sus­cep­ti­ble to pre­da­tion and other causes of death due to their small size. While flamin­gos as a whole are gen­er­ally sus­cep­ti­ble to dis­eases and pathogens like avian flu and tu­ber­cu­lo­sis (Meziani 2011). (Meziani, 2011)

• Ecosystem Impact
• soil aeration

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Pos­i­tive

Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae don't gen­er­ally have a pos­i­tive ef­fect on hu­mans, in some cases they are hunted for their meat and sold in mar­kets. They are also seen as at­trac­tions for tourists but due to the saline lakes and other lo­ca­tions for breed­ing they are hard to get to for ob­ser­va­tion. Since their bright col­ored feath­ers fade with time they are not sold at mar­kets as a valu­able ma­te­r­ial (Meziani 2011). (Meziani, 2011)

• Positive Impacts
• food
• ecotourism

Eco­nomic Im­por­tance for Hu­mans: Neg­a­tive

Fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae do not di­rectly pose neg­a­tive ef­fects on hu­mans. This is due to their seclu­sive na­ture and habi­tats around saline and al­ka­line lakes.

If there is any neg­a­tive im­pact from fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae it would be from trans­mis­sion of dis­eases due to the large flock size and close prox­im­ity. Size avian flu and other dis­eases can be eas­ily trans­ferred be­tween in­di­vid­u­als be­cause of their close prox­im­ity, but since they are so seclu­sive there have not been any cases of dis­eases trans­ferred to the human pop­u­la­tion by fam­ily Phoeni­copteri­dae (Meziani 2011). (Meziani, 2011)

• Negative Impacts
• causes or carries domestic animal disease

Con­ser­va­tion Sta­tus

Ac­cord­ing to the IUCN red list there are no species of flamingo that are en­dan­gered as of this time. Un­for­tu­nately An­dean flamin­gos Phoeni­co­par­rus and­i­nus are con­sid­ered vul­ner­a­ble (VU) and the pop­u­la­tion trend is de­creas­ing. There are three species that are near threat­ened (NT), those are Puna flamin­gos Phoeni­co­par­rus jamesi, Chilean flamin­gos Phoeni­copterus chilen­sis, and Lesser flamin­gos Phoeni­cona­ias minor. The trends for these species are de­creas­ing ex­cept for Puna flamingo pop­u­la­tions which seem to be hold­ing steady cur­rently. The re­main­ing two species are Amer­i­can flamin­gos Phoeni­copterus ruber and Greater flamin­gos Phoeni­copterus roseus which are con­sid­ered least con­cerned (LC) and have pop­u­la­tions in­creas­ing (IUCN Red List 2022).

There is also a threat to the spe­cific en­vi­ron­ments that each species oc­cu­pies; it can be dif­fi­cult to help undo neg­a­tive human in­ter­ac­tion es­pe­cially when it in­volves the en­vi­ron­ment. There has been a large ef­fect from cli­mate change and water lev­els within the en­vi­ron­ments oc­cu­pied by flamin­gos. There has re­cently been a push to help counter these changes through eco­tourism and use said prof­its to help re­store the ecosys­tem and en­vi­ron­ment (Paul 2021). ("IUCN Red List", 2022; Paul, 2021)

• IUCN Red List [Link]

  Not Evaluated

Con­trib­u­tors

Nathan Ooms (au­thor), Col­orado State Uni­ver­sity, Au­drey Bow­man (ed­i­tor), Col­orado State Uni­ver­sity, Syd­ney Collins (ed­i­tor), Col­orado State Uni­ver­sity.

Ref­er­ences

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