Red-necked Francolin

About the Red-necked Francolin

The red-necked spurfowl or red-necked francolin (Pternistis afer), is a gamebird in the pheasant family Phasianidae that is a resident species in southern Africa. The red-necked spurfowl was described in 1776 by the German zoologist Philipp Ludwig Statius Müller and given the binomial name Tetrao afer. The type locality was later designated as Benguela in western Angola. The specific epithet afer is the Latin word for "African". The species is now placed in the genus Pternistis that was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Georg Wagler in 1832. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2019 found that the red-necked spurfowl is sister to the grey-breasted spurfowl.

Although many subspecies have been described only four are now recognised: P. a. cranchii (Leach, 1818) — north Gabon and south Congo Republic though south, east Democratic Republic of the Congo to central Angola and west Zambia to central Tanzania, west Kenya and Uganda

P. a. afer (Müller, PLS, 1776) — west Angola, northwest Namibia P. a. castaneiventer Gunning & Roberts, 1911 — south and east South Africa P. a. humboldtii (Peters, W, 1854) — southeast Kenya and north and east Tanzania to Mozambique... Wikipedia →