Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Anseriformes > Anatidae > Bucephala > Bucephala albeola

Bucephala albeola (Bufflehead)

Synonyms: Anas albeola (homotypic); Charitonetta albeola; Glaucionetta albeola
Language: French; Spanish

Wikipedia Abstract

The bufflehead (Bucephala albeola) is a small American sea duck of the genus Bucephala, the goldeneyes. This species was first described by Linnaeus in his Systema naturae in 1758 as Anas albeola. The genus name is derived from Ancient Greek boukephalos, "bullheaded", from bous, "bull " and kephale, "head", a reference to the oddly bulbous head shape of the species. The species name albeola is from Latin albus, "white". The English name is a combination of buffalo and head, again referring to the head shape. This is most noticeable when the male puffs out the feathers on the head, thus greatly increasing the apparent size of the head.
View Wikipedia Record: Bucephala albeola

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
2
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
17
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 5.58024
EDGE Score: 1.88407
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Clutch Size [7]  8
Clutches / Year [4]  1
Fledging [2]  53 days
Global Population (2017 est.) [3]  1,700,000
Incubation [4]  30 days
Mating System [8]  Monogamy
Maximum Longevity [4]  19 years
Migration [1]  Intercontinental
Snout to Vent Length [2]  15 inches (37 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds
Wing Span [9]  22 inches (.57 m)
Adult Weight [2]  406 grams
Birth Weight [4]  24 grams
Female Weight [6]  334 grams
Male Weight [6]  1.043 lbs (473 g)
Weight Dimorphism [6]  41.6 %
Breeding Habitat [3]  Boreal forests
Wintering Geography [3]  Widespread U.S.
Wintering Habitat [3]  Coastal marine, Freshwater lakes and rivers
Diet [5]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Piscivore, Granivore
Diet - Fish [5]  20 %
Diet - Invertibrates [5]  70 %
Diet - Seeds [5]  10 %
Forages - Underwater [5]  100 %
Female Maturity [4]  2 years
Male Maturity [4]  2 years

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

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Ecosystems

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
California Floristic Province Mexico, United States No
Madrean Pine-Oak Woodlands Mexico, United States No
Mesoamerica Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama No
Polynesia-Micronesia Fiji, Micronesia, Polynesia, Samoa, Tonga, United States No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Haliaeetus leucocephalus (Bald Eagle)[12]

Consumers

Range Map

External References

NatureServe Explorer

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Myers, P., R. Espinosa, C. S. Parr, T. Jones, G. S. Hammond, and T. A. Dewey. 2006. The Animal Diversity Web (online). Accessed February 01, 2010 at animaldiversity.org
♦ 2Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 3Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2017. Accessed on January 2018.
♦ 4de Magalhaes, J. P., and Costa, J. (2009) A database of vertebrate longevity records and their relation to other life-history traits. Journal of Evolutionary Biology 22(8):1770-1774
♦ 5Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 6Henny, CJ, JL Carter, and BJ Carter. 1981. A review of bufflehead sex and age criteria with notes on weights. Wildfowl 32:117-122
♦ 7Jetz W, Sekercioglu CH, Böhning-Gaese K (2008) The Worldwide Variation in Avian Clutch Size across Species and Space PLoS Biol 6(12): e303. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060303
♦ 8Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
♦ 9del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 10Cirtwill, Alyssa R.; Eklöf, Anna (2018), Data from: Feeding environment and other traits shape species' roles in marine food webs, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.1mv20r6
♦ 11Lafferty, K. D., R. F. Hechinger, J. C. Shaw, K. L. Whitney and A. M. Kuris (in press) Food webs and parasites in a salt marsh ecosystem. In Disease ecology: community structure and pathogen dynamics (eds S. Collinge and C. Ray). Oxford University Press, Oxford.
♦ 12Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.
♦ 13Gibson, D. I., Bray, R. A., & Harris, E. A. (Compilers) (2005). Host-Parasite Database of the Natural History Museum, London
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0