| Bowerbirds | ||||||||||
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Male Golden Bowerbird. | ||||||||||
| Scientific Classification | ||||||||||
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| Genera | ||||||||||
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Ailuroedus Archboldia Amblyornis Prionodura Sericulus Ptilonorhynchus Chlamydera |
The 19 bowerbirds and catbirds make up the family Ptilonorhynchidae. All are small to medium in size and their distribution is centered around the tropical northern part of Australia-New Guinea.
Their most notable characteristic is the extraordinarily complex behaviour of males, which build a bower to attract mates: a collection of look-alike objects that are carefully collected, sorted, and arranged by colour into spectacular structures, often including some hundreds of shells, leaves, flowers, stones or berries. This has led some researchers to regard the bowerbirds as the most advanced of any species of bird.
It is traditional to regard the bowerbirds as closely related to the birds of paradise; however recent DNA-DNA hybridisation studies suggest that, although both families are part of the great corvid radiation that took place in or near Australia-New Guinea, the bowerbirds are more distant from the birds of paradise than was once thought. Sibley's landmark DNA studies placed them close to the lyrebirds, however anatomical evidence appears to contradict this and the true relationship remains unclear.