Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Accipitriformes > Accipitridae > Gyps > Gyps africanus

Gyps africanus (White-backed Vulture)

Wikipedia Abstract

The white-backed vulture (Gyps africanus) is an Old World vulture in the family Accipitridae, which also includes eagles, kites, buzzards and hawks. It is closely related to the European griffon vulture, G. fulvus. Sometimes it is called African white-backed vulture to distinguish it from the Oriental white-backed vulture — nowadays usually called white-rumped vulture — to which it was formerly believed to be closely related.
View Wikipedia Record: Gyps africanus

Endangered Species

Status: Critically Endangered
View IUCN Record: Gyps africanus

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
2
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
51
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 6.15358
EDGE Score: 4.04705
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  11.978 lbs (5.433 kg)
Birth Weight [2]  214 grams
Diet [3]  Carnivore (Vertebrates)
Diet - Scavenger [3]  100 %
Forages - Ground [3]  100 %
Clutch Size [6]  1
Clutches / Year [4]  1
Fledging [4]  4 months 5 days
Incubation [5]  57 days
Maximum Longevity [1]  20 years
Raptor Research Conservation Priority [7]  31
Snout to Vent Length [4]  33 inches (84 cm)
Wing Span [8]  7.183 feet (2.19 m)
Female Maturity [4]  5 years 11 months

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Coastal Forests of Eastern Africa Kenya, Mozambique, Somalia, Tanzania No
Eastern Afromontane Burundi, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Tanzania, Uganda, Yemen, Zimbabwe No
Guinean Forests of West Africa Benin, Côte d'Ivoire, Equatorial Guinea, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, São Tomé and Príncipe, Sierra Leone, Togo No
Horn of Africa Djibouti, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Oman, Somalia, Yemen No
Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland No

Prey / Diet

Kobus ellipsiprymnus (waterbuck)[9]

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1de 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
♦ 2Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
♦ 3Hamish 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
♦ 4Nathan 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
♦ 5del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 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
♦ 7Buechley ER, Santangeli A, Girardello M, et al. Global raptor research and conservation priorities: Tropical raptors fall prey to knowledge gaps. Divers Distrib. 2019;25:856–869. https://doi.org/10.1111/ddi.12901
♦ 8National Geographic Magazine - January 2016 - Vultures - Elizabeth Royte
♦ 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.
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