Sharp-tailed Grouse - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

The Greater Prairie-chicken, Lesser Prairie-chicken, and Sharp-tailed Grouse make up the genus Tympanuchus, a genus of grouse found only in North America. The full scientific name of the sharp-tailed grouse is Tympanuchus phasianellus. Six extant and one extinct subspecies of Sharp-tailed Grouse have been described:

• T. p. phasianellus: the nominate race or Northern Sharp-tailed Grouse is found in Manitoba, northern Ontario, and central Quebec. It is partly migratory.
• T. p. kennicotti: the Northwestern Sharp-tailed Grouse is resident from the Mackenzie River to the Great Slave Lake in the Northwest Territories, Canada.
• T. p. caurus: the Alaska Sharp-Tailed Grouse inhabits north-central Alaska eastwards to the southern Yukon, northern British Columbia, and northern Alberta.
• T. p. columbianus: the Columbian Sharp-tailed Grouse can be found in isolated pockets of native sagebrush and bunchgrass plains of Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, and British Columbia.
• T. p. campestris: the Prairie Sharp-tailed Grouse lives in Saskatchewan, southeastern Manitoba, southwestern Ontario, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan to northern Minnesota and northern Wisconsin. This subspecies coexists with the Plains race around the northern Red River valley and prefers low seral stages of recently converted forests to shrubland.
• T. p. jamesi: the Plains Sharp-tailed Grouse makes its home in the northern Great Plains in southern Alberta and Saskatchewan, eastern Montana, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, and northeastern Wyoming. This race lives in the mixed-grass prairie preferring a mosaic of native grasslands, cropland, and brushy/woody riparian draws, creeks, and rivers for a winter food source above the snow cover as buds and berries.
• T. p. hueyi: the New Mexico Sharp-tailed Grouse is extinct.