Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Anseriformes > Anatidae > Lophodytes > Lophodytes cucullatus

Lophodytes cucullatus (Hooded Merganser)

Synonyms: Mergellus cucullatus; Mergus cucullatus (homotypic); Mergus cucullatus cucullatus
Language: French; Spanish

Wikipedia Abstract

The hooded merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus) is a species of small duck. It is the only extant species in the genus Lophodytes. The bird is striking in appearance; both sexes have crests that they can raise or lower, and the breeding plumage of the male is handsomely patterned and coloured. The hooded merganser has a sawbill but is not classified as a typical merganser. Hooded mergansers are the second smallest species of merganser, with only the smew of Europe and Asia being smaller, and it also is the only merganser whose native habitat is restricted to North America.
View Wikipedia Record: Lophodytes cucullatus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
2
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
18
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 5.71521
EDGE Score: 1.90437
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Clutch Size [7]  11
Clutches / Year [4]  1
Fledging [2]  71 days
Global Population (2017 est.) [3]  730,000
Incubation [4]  31 days
Maximum Longevity [4]  12 years
Snout to Vent Length [2]  18 inches (46 cm)
Water Biome [1]  Lakes and Ponds, Rivers and Streams
Wing Span [8]  25 inches (.63 m)
Adult Weight [2]  1.274 lbs (578 g)
Birth Weight [4]  31 grams
Female Weight [6]  1.499 lbs (680 g)
Male Weight [6]  1.221 lbs (554 g)
Weight Dimorphism [6]  22.7 %
Breeding Habitat [3]  Boreal forests, Temperate eastern forests
Wintering Geography [3]  Widespread U.S.
Wintering Habitat [3]  Freshwater lakes and rivers
Diet [5]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Carnivore (Vertebrates), Piscivore, Granivore, Herbivore
Diet - Ectothermic [5]  10 %
Diet - Fish [5]  30 %
Diet - Invertibrates [5]  40 %
Diet - Plants [5]  10 %
Diet - Seeds [5]  10 %
Forages - Water Surface [5]  20 %
Forages - Underwater [5]  80 %
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

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Haliaeetus leucocephalus (Bald Eagle)[9]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Aix sponsa (Wood Duck)[9]
Capillaria anatis[11]
Schistocephalus solidus[11]
Streptocara crassicauda[11]
Streptocara formosensis[11]

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
♦ 6Dugger, BD, KM Dugger, and LH Fredrickson. 1994. Hooded Merganser (Lophodytes cucullatus). In The Birds of North America, no. 98 (A. Poole and F. Gill, Eds.). Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, and American Ornithologists' Union, Washington, DC
♦ 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
♦ 8del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 9Jorrit 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.
♦ 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
♦ 11Gibson, 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