Aerodramus fuciphagus

The edible-nest swiftlet, also known as the white-nest swiftlet, is a small bird of the swift family which is found in Southeast Asia. Its opaque and whitish nest is made exclusively of solidified saliva and is the main ingredient of bird's nest soup, a delicacy of Chinese cuisine. Germain's swiftlet is now treated as conspecific with this species.

Aerodramus fuciphagus

Hectonichus · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.

On record

Recorded, not inferred
Also called
white-nest swiftletPBDB
Sits inside
AerodramusPBDB
Diet
insectivorePBDB, for Apodidae
Life habit
volantPBDB, for Apodidae
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Theropoda
Environment
terrestrialPBDB, for Apodidae
Mass
15.5 gWikidata

Time the record covers

At most 129 thousand years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 129 ka and 0 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Pleistocene — about 15 of 32 occurrencesPleistoceneHolocene — about 17 of 32 occurrences147 ka–126 ka Mya — about 0.4 occurrences126 ka–105 ka Mya — about 3 occurrences105 ka–84 ka Mya — about 3 occurrences84 ka–63 ka Mya — about 3 occurrences63 ka–42 ka Mya — about 3 occurrences42 ka–21 ka Mya — about 3 occurrences21 ka–0 Mya — about 18 occurrences629 ka0 Mya

32 occurrences of Aerodramus fuciphagus on record, most of them in the Holocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.

When

32 occurrences

These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.

Aerodramus fuciphagus and its relatives

Holocene

Where Aerodramus fuciphagus and its relatives were recorded in the Holocene.

Found in the same rock

19 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 32 sites for Aerodramus fuciphagus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.

This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.

Entered from

1 reference

Each of the 32 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Aerodramus fuciphagus

Credit
Hectonichus
Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Aerodramus fuciphagus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.

The description on this site

Licence
CC BY-SA 4.0

This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.

Keep going

What may have been alongside itAerodramus through timeFormations of the HoloceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. (Thunberg 1812)