Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Passeriformes > Calcariidae > Plectrophenax > Plectrophenax nivalis

Plectrophenax nivalis (Snow Bunting)

Synonyms: Calcarius nivalis; Emberiza nivalis (homotypic); Plectrophenax nivalis subnivalis
Language: French

Wikipedia Abstract

The snow bunting (Plectrophenax nivalis), sometimes colloquially called a snowflake, is a passerine bird in the Calcariidae family . It is an Arctic specialist, with a circumpolar Arctic breeding range throughout the northern hemisphere. There are small isolated populations on a few high mountain tops south of the Arctic region, including the Cairngorms in central Scotland and the Saint Elias Mountains on the southern Alaska-Yukon border, and also Cape Breton Highlands. The snow bunting is the most northerly recorded passerine in the world.
View Wikipedia Record: Plectrophenax nivalis

Infraspecies

Plectrophenax nivalis insulae
Plectrophenax nivalis nivalis
Plectrophenax nivalis townsendi
Plectrophenax nivalis vlasowae

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
4
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
25
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 9.98934
EDGE Score: 2.39693
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Clutch Size [7]  5
Clutches / Year [4]  1
Fledging [6]  14 days
Global Population (2017 est.) [3]  29,000,000
Incubation [4]  12 days
Mating Display [8]  Ground and non-acrobatic aerial display
Mating System [8]  Monogamy
Maximum Longevity [4]  10 years
Migration [1]  Intracontinental
Water Biome [1]  Coastal
Wing Span [9]  14 inches (.35 m)
Adult Weight [2]  37 grams
Birth Weight [4]  3 grams
Female Weight [6]  35 grams
Male Weight [6]  39 grams
Weight Dimorphism [6]  11.4 %
Breeding Habitat [3]  Arctic tundra
Wintering Geography [3]  Northern U.S./Canada
Wintering Habitat [3]  Temperate grasslands, Beaches and estuaries, Agricultural
Diet [5]  Carnivore (Invertebrates), Herbivore
Diet - Invertibrates [5]  30 %
Diet - Plants [5]  70 %
Forages - Understory [5]  10 %
Forages - Ground [5]  90 %
Female Maturity [4]  1 year
Male Maturity [4]  1 year

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

+ Click for partial list (100)Full list (208)

Important Bird Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Caucasus Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran, Russia, Turkey No
Mountains of Central Asia Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Predators

Vulpes lagopus (Arctic Fox)[10]

Consumers

Parasitized by 
Ceratophyllus borealis[12]
Ceratophyllus gallinae (European chicken flea)[12]
Ceratophyllus garei[12]

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
♦ 2Storchová, Lenka; Hořák, David (2018), Data from: Life-history characteristics of European birds, Dryad, Dataset, https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.n6k3n
♦ 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
♦ 6Nathan 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
♦ 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
♦ 9British Trust for Ornithology
♦ 10Jorrit 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.
♦ 11J. Dierschke (2002) Food preferences of Shorelarks Eremophila alpestris, Snow Buntings Plectrophenax nivalis and Twites Carduelis flavirostris wintering in the Wadden Sea: Seeds of plants from lower salt marsh communities are preferred, with insects less important., Bird Study, 49:3, 263-269
♦ 12International Flea Database
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