| Summary: | Includes bibliographies. === By almost any definition, guineafowl (Numidinae) are characteristically African birds. This small subfamily (4-5 genera, 5-8 species) is endemic to, and possibly evolved, in Africa (Ghigi 1936). Nearly every major African biome and biotope has an associated guineafowl taxon (Crowe & Snow 1978). Guineafowl are sedentary birds (Chapin 1932; Elgood et al. 1973), and therefore should be more susceptible to local selection pressures than would be more mobile taxa (Ehrlich & Raven 1969). At least some inter- and intra-specific phenetic variation appears to be correlated with variation in the environment (Crowe & Snow 1978). In this dissertation, I investigate aspects of the evolution and ecology of guineafowl, and use the results of my analyses to formulate or test hypotheses concerning broad patterns of evolution and ecology of birds in Africa. Specifically, my seven aims are to: 1. re-evaluate the rather confused taxonomy of the subfamily, 2. produce a parsimonious phylogeny based on the analysis of shared derived Character-states, 3. develop models of speciation which are consistent with the above phylogeny and the likely geological and climatological history of Africa, 4. suggest a scheme of avifaunal zones based on the analysis of the distributions of, and phylogenetic relationships between recognized guineafowl taxa, 5. discover the possible adaptive significance of phenetic variation in polytypic guineafowl species, 6. demonstrate possible anatomical adaptations in the vascular system of the head and neck of Numida meleagris, 7. determine the likely mechanism of population limitation in N. meleagris. This dissertation consists of seven published or submitted papers which relate to one or more of the aims listed above.
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