Editing Megapode (section)

==Behaviour and ecology==
[[Image:Brushturkeykansaszoo.jpg|thumb|right|250px|Australian brushturkey on its mound]]
Megapodes are mainly solitary birds that do not incubate their eggs with their body heat as other birds do, but bury them. Their eggs are unusual in having a large yolk, making up 50–70% of the egg weight.<ref name=Starck-Sutter-2000/> The birds are best known for building massive nest mounds of decaying vegetation, which the male attends, adding or removing litter to regulate the internal heat while the eggs develop. However, some bury their eggs in other ways; there are burrow-nesters which use geothermal heat, and others which simply rely on the heat of the sun warming the sand. Some species vary their incubation strategy depending on the local environment.<ref name=Steadman-2006/> 

Although the [[Australian brushturkey]] was thought to exhibit [[temperature-dependent sex determination]], this was later proven false;<ref name=Göth-Booth-2005-03-22/> temperature does, however, affect embryo mortality and resulting offspring sex ratios.  The nonsocial nature of their incubation raises questions as to how the hatchlings come to recognise other members of their species, which is due to [[imprinting (psychology)|imprinting]] in other members of the order [[Galliformes]]. Research suggests an instinctive visual recognition of specific movement patterns is made by the individual species of megapode.<ref name=Göth-Evans-2004/>

[[Image:Malleefowl Pengo.svg|thumb|right|250px|This cross-section of a megapode mound shows a layer of sand (up to 1&nbsp;m thick) used for insulation, an egg chamber, and a layer of rotting [[compost]]. The egg chamber is kept at a constant 33°C by opening and closing air vents in the insulation layer, while heat comes from the compost below.]]
Megapode chicks do not have an [[egg tooth]]; they use their powerful claws to break out of the egg, and then tunnel their way up to the surface of the mound, lying on their backs and scratching at the sand and vegetable matter. Similar to other [[superprecocial]] birds, they hatch fully feathered and active, already able to fly and live independently from their parents.<ref name=Starck-Sutter-2000/> In megapodes superprecociality apparently evolved secondarily from brooding and at least loose parental care as more typical in Galliformes.<ref name=Harris-Birks-Leaché-2014/>
Eggs previously assigned to ''[[Genyornis]]'' have been reassigned to giant megapode species. Some dietary and chronological data previously assigned to [[Dromornithidae|dromornithids]] may instead be assigned to the giant megapodes.<ref name=Worthy-2016-01-13/>

Megapodes share some similarities to the extinct [[enantiornithes]] in terms of their superprecocial life cycle, though also several differences.{{efn|
"These feather traces and the plumage in HPG-15-1 strongly suggest that members of the Enantiornithes were born fully fledged and capable of flight soon after hatching, somewhat resembling the super-precocial megapodes, the only group of neornithines in which neonates are similarly  born fledged and capable of  flight (Zhou and Zhang, 2004; Jones and Göth, 2008; Xing et al., 2017). Megapodes do not fly immediately, requiring nearly two days to dig themselves out of their mounds during which they preen off their feather sheaths and let their feathers dry (Jones and Göth, 2008). Similarly, hatchling enantiornithines would have had to wait until their feather sheaths were removed and their feathers dry before attempting flight. Although ecological and behavioural differences clearly exist between enantiornithines and megapodes (e.g., enantiornithines were arboreal and not mound-nesters), megapodes represent the precocial extreme in extant neornithines and thus the closest analogue  for enantiornithine development, for which all evidence indicates a form of extreme precociality (Elzanowski, 1981; Zhou and Zhang, 2004; Xing et al., 2017)."<ref name=OConnor-Falk-etal-2020-01-03/>
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