Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Charadriiformes > Charadriidae > Charadrius > Charadrius melodus

Charadrius melodus (Piping Plover)

Language: French; Spanish

Wikipedia Abstract

The piping plover (Charadrius melodus) is a small sand-colored, sparrow-sized shorebird that nests and feeds along coastal sand and gravel beaches in North America. The adult has yellow-orange legs, a black band across the forehead from eye to eye, and a black stripe running along the breast line. This chest band is usually thicker in males during the breeding season, and it is the only reliable way to tell the sexes apart. The bird is difficult to see when it is standing still, as it blends well with open, sandy beach habitats. It typically runs in short spurts and stops.
View Wikipedia Record: Charadrius melodus

Infraspecies

Charadrius melodus circumcinctus (Piping plover)
Charadrius melodus melodus (Piping plover)

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
7
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
42
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 15.2733
EDGE Score: 3.48267
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Clutch Size [6]  4
Clutches / Year [4]  1
Fledging [2]  33 days
Global Population (2017 est.) [3]  8,400
Incubation [4]  28 days
Mating Display [7]  Non-acrobatic aerial display
Maximum Longevity [4]  14 years
Migration [1]  Intercontinental
Water Biome [1]  Coastal
Wing Span [8]  14 inches (.36 m)
Adult Weight [2]  55 grams
Birth Weight [4]  7 grams
Breeding Habitat [3]  Beaches and estuaries, Saline lakes
Wintering Geography [3]  Widespread Coastal
Wintering Habitat [3]  Beaches and estuaries
Diet [5]  Carnivore (Invertebrates)
Diet - Invertibrates [5]  100 %
Forages - Ground [5]  60 %
Forages - Water Surface [5]  40 %
Female Maturity [4]  1 year
Male Maturity [4]  1 year

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Important Bird Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Caribbean Islands Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Aruba, Bahamas, Barbados, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Dominica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Grenada, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Martinique, Montserrat, Netherlands Antilles, Puerto Rico, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent And The Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, Turks And Caicos Islands, Virgin Islands - British, Virgin Islands - U.S. No
Mesoamerica Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama No

Prey / Diet

Bledius opaculus[9]
Dryocoetes autographus[9]

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
♦ 6Jetz 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
♦ 7Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
♦ 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.
♦ 9Beetles (Coleoptera) in the diet of Piping Plovers in the Iles de la Madeleine, Québec, Canada, CHRISTOPHER G. MAJKA & FRANÇOIS SHAFFER, Wader Study Group Bulletin 115 (2) 2008
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