Rosella
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Psittaciformes
Family: Psittacidae
Subfamily: Platycercinae
Genus: Platycercus
Vigors, 1825

Species
Platycercus icterotis
Platycercus elegans
Platycercus adelaidae
Platycercus flaveolus
Platycercus caledonicus
Platycercus adscitus
Platycercus eximius
Platycercus venustus
See article text for an alternate arrangement

A rosella is one of 5-8 species of colorful Australian parrots in the genus Platycercus. Platycercus means "broad-" or "flat-tailed", reflecting a feature common to the rosellas and other members of the broad-tailed parrot subfamily.

Rosellas are native to Australia and some nearby islands, where they inhabit forests, woodlands, farmlands, and suburban parks and gardens. They are confined to the coastal mountains and plains and are absent from the outback. Introduced populations have also established themselves in New Zealand and Norfolk Island.

Rosellas range in size from 25-38 cm (9.8-15 in). Their diet consists mainly of seeds and fruit.

Because of their strikingly colorful plumage, several species are widely kept as pets.

Legend has it that early settlers first encountered the Eastern Rosella at Rose Hill, now a Sydney suburb. They called it a "Rose Hiller", which eventually became "rosella".

There is also a second story that the name is derived from 'Rosetta', the first name of the wife of George Fife Angas, a settler in Australia, but he forgot to cross his T's (leaving them appearing as lowercase L's), hence "rosella".


Systematics and taxonomy
The genus Platycercus has a number of lineages, whose interrelationships have been fairly well resoved (e.g. Ovenden et al., 1987). However, the intra-lineage relationships are not clear at all in several cases, with for example the Crimson, Yellow and Adelaide Rosellas having been considered everything between three distinct species and a single clinal population. What is generally accepted is that the Western Rosella is most distantly related to all other forms, and that the blue-cheeked and the white-cheeked taxa form monophyletic lineages.

The arrangement in the taxobox presents the forms as separate species, the version below lumps the disputed forms into P. elegans and P. adscitus.

Genus Platycercus
Western Rosella, Platycercus icterotis
P. i. icterotis
P. i. xanthogenys
Platycercus elegans group
Crimson Rosella, Platycercus elegans elegans (sometimes considered a separate species)
P. e. melanoptera (probably invalid)
P. e. nigrescens (possibly a separate species)
Adelaide Rosella, P. e. adelaidae (sometimes considered a separate species)
P. e. fleurieuensis (probably invalid)
P. e. subadelaidae
Yellow Rosella, P. e. flaveolus (sometimes considered a separate species)
Green Rosella, Platycercus caledonicus (formerly considered a subspecies of the Yellow Rosella)
Platycercus adscitus group
Pale-headed Rosella, P. a. adscitus (sometimes considered a separate species)
Platycercus a. palliceps
Eastern Rosella, Platycercus a. eximius (sometimes considered a separate species)
Gold-mantled Rosella , P. a. cecilae
P. a. diemenensis
Northern Rosella, Platycercus venustus venustus
P. v. hilli (probably invalid)

References
Ovenden, J. R.; Mackinlay, A. G. & Crozie, R. H. (1987): Systematics and Mitochondrial Genome Evolution of Australian Rosellas (Aves: Platycercidae). Molecular Biology and Evolution 4(5): 526-543. PDF fulltext

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
License and Copyright Statement - currently,
"All text is available under the terms of the
GNU Free Documentation License.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_FDL

Shown below: Crimson Rosella, Eastern Rosella, Pale Headed Rosella