Fregata magnificens
Mathews, 1914 · speciesAt a glance
Sources13 archives
Databases and archives Fregata magnificens's data was compiled from.
WikipediaWikimedia Foundation17 languages↗
BioWikiNetmultilingual Wikipediamultilingual↗
GBIFGlobal Biodiversity Information Facility856 847 records↗
OBISOcean Biodiversity Information System76 809 records↗
ENAEuropean Nucleotide Archive · EMBL-EBI2 eDNA detections↗
BOLD SystemsCentre for Biodiversity Genomics7 specimens↗
Open Tree of LifeOpenTreephylogeny backbone↗
GoaTGenomes on a Tree · Sangergenome & karyotype↗
NCBIUS National Library of Medicinegenome & karyotype↗
Paleobiology DatabasePBDB consortiumfossil record↗
WikidataWikimedia Foundationstructured facts↗
IOC World Bird ListIOCbird checklist↗
GLoBIGlobal Biotic Interactionsbiotic interactions↗Every layer below draws on the sources above — open one to explore it, or use ← → to move between tabs.
The magnificent frigatebird (Fregata magnificens) is a seabird of the frigatebird family Fregatidae. With a length of 89 - and wingspan of 2.17 - it is the largest species of frigatebird. It occurs over tropical and subtropical waters off America, between northern Mexico and Perú on the Pacific coast and between Florida and southern Brazil along the Atlantic coast. There are also populations on the Galápagos Islands in the Pacific and the Cape Verde islands in the Atlantic. The magnificent frigatebird is a large, lightly built seabird with brownish-black plumage, long narrow wings and a deeply forked tail. The male has a striking red gular sac which he inflates to attract a mate. The female is slightly larger than the male and has a white breast and belly. Frigatebirds feed on fish taken in flight from the ocean's surface (often flying fish), and sometimes indulge in kleptoparasitism, harassing other birds to force them to regurgitate their food.
No narrative description available for this taxon yet.
Size & morphology14
Life cycle & reproduction12
Diet & foraging9
Habitat & environment6
Other traits1
A DNA barcode is a short, standardised stretch of genes that works like a fingerprint — enough to tell one species from another. Below is the molecular trace Fregata magnificens has left across the world's sequence archives.
At a glance
★ the standard DNA barcode for this group — the short region actually read to tell this species apart. The rest are extra genes sequenced along the way.
Besides the big genome in the nucleus, cells carry a small, circular loop of DNA inside the cell's energy factories — the mitochondria. It is inherited almost only from the mother and is a leftover from ancient bacteria that moved into the cell. The mitochondrial markers above (ND*, COX, CYTB…) are read from exactly this loop. Outer ring = one strand, inner ring = the other.
The complete instruction manual Fregata magnificens carries — its genome. We read it from three angles — how big it is, how the DNA is packed into chromosomes, and how completely it has been sequenced — and explain how to read each value as you go.
Genome sizehow big the whole instruction manual is
Measured in base pairs (bp) — the individual letters of DNA (human ≈ 3.2 Gb, a bacterium a few million). The chart places this genome on a logarithmic scale — each step to the right is ten times bigger — among reference organisms. Across species a bigger genome loosely tracks with larger cells, slower growth and lower-energy lifestyles (powered flight favours small genomes) — yet it does not imply more genes or a more advanced organism (the long-standing C-value paradox).
Sequencing statusassembly quality — how far to trust these numbers
Assembly level tells you how finished the sequence is — from fragmented contigs, through scaffolds, up to a full chromosome-level assembly. BUSCO % estimates completeness: the share of genes expected to be present that were actually found. These describe the data quality, not the organism.
How far back this lineage goes — and how we know. Everything here is measured in Ma, short for “mega-annum”: millions of years ago. The chart reads left to right like a calendar of the Earth, from the deep past on the left to today at the right edgetop to bottom like a core drilled through the Earth, from the deep past at the top down to today at the bottom.
At a glance
When this lineage existed
How to read this: the coloured strip along the bottomdown the left is the geological calendar — the standard epochs (Pliocene, Pleistocene…) every museum uses, shown so you can see which chapter of Earth's history this lineage lived in. This lineage is a young one, so the strip is zoomed in to epochs — the finer subdivisions inside a period. The solid bar is the fossil range: the span between the oldest and the youngest fossil that palaeontologists have assigned to Fregata magnificens. Above itBeside it, each dot is one dated fossil find — few enough to count, so they are drawn individually rather than as a graph.
How it livedPBDB
Record type933 659 records
Origin
Range
Depth
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Museum / Voucheredphysical evidence
Backed by a physical specimen — a herbarium sheet, sample or voucher held in a collection. “Vouchered” means supported by material evidence, not just an observation.
Cultivated / Captivenot free-living
A living individual in a botanical garden, zoo or nursery — cultivated or kept, not free-living.
Wildobservation + sensor
Human sightings and records, or camera-trap / sensor detections — someone (or a device) saw or captured the species in the wild.
Holding institutions36 of 59 geolocated
Institutions and collections holding physical, vouchered specimens of this species — click a row to fly to it on the map.
| Institution | Specimens |
|---|---|
| US | 236 |
| New Haven, US | 70 |
| Cambridge, US | 58 |
| San Diego, US | 36 |
| Chicago, US | 33 |
| Berkeley, US | 31 |
| Ann Arbor, US | 25 |
| Denver, US | 22 |
| Philadelphia, US | 21 |
| Washington, US | 20 |
| Los Angeles, US | 20 |
| Louisiana State University, Museum of Zoologylocation not on record | 19 |
| Iowa City, US | 18 |
| Toronto, CA | 16 |
| Universidad Nacional de Colombia (UNAL)location not on record | 14 |
| Vancouver, CA | 14 |
| Ohio State University - Bird Division, Columbus, OH (OSUM)location not on record | 11 |
| St. Paul, US | 8 |
| Zacatecas, MX | 8 |
| Delaware Museum of Nature and Sciencelocation not on record | 8 |
| Wuzhou, CN | 7 |
| Seattle, US | 7 |
| CASlocation not on record | 7 |
| Geneva, CH | 7 |
| Mongolian Museum of Natural Historylocation not on record | 7 |
| Puerto Ayora, EC | 7 |
| Mexico City, MX | 6 |
| Moore Laboratory of Zoology, Occidental Collegelocation not on record | 6 |
| Chongqing Museumlocation not on record | 6 |
| Copenhagen, DK | 4 |
| Albany, US | 4 |
| 4 | |
| Museu Nacional/Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeirolocation not on record | 4 |
| Washington State University, Charles R. Conner Museumlocation not on record | 3 |
| Chicago, US | 3 |
| University of California Los Angeleslocation not on record | 3 |
| Ithaca, US | 3 |
| Arizona State University Biocollectionslocation not on record | 3 |
| Mexico City, MX | 3 |
| Museo civico La Terra e l'Uomo di Crocetta del Montellolocation not on record | 3 |
| Tapachula, MX | 3 |
| Ciudad de México, MX | 2 |
| Morelia, MX | 2 |
| Texas Cooperative Wildlife Collectionlocation not on record | 2 |
| Tuxtla Gutiérrez, MX | 1 |
| Instituto Tecnológico Metropolitanolocation not on record | 1 |
| Saint John, CA | 1 |
| UNICAMPlocation not on record | 1 |
| Honolulu, US | 1 |
| ASUlocation not on record | 1 |
| NHMOlocation not on record | 1 |
| Paris, FR | 1 |
| South Kensington, GB | 1 |
| ASNHClocation not on record | 1 |
| Universidad del Valle (UniValle)location not on record | 1 |
| Jurica-Suchy Nature Museumlocation not on record | 1 |
| Pontificia Universidad Javeriana (PUJ)location not on record | 1 |
| Tall Timbers Research Stationlocation not on record | 1 |
| München, DE | 1 |
Cultivated / Captivenot free-living
A living individual in a botanical garden, zoo or nursery — cultivated or kept, not free-living.
Where the DNA of Fregata magnificens was picked up in samples of water, soil or air — nobody saw the organism, only its DNA left behind. A trace is a clue that the species was near, not a confirmed sighting.
Signal
Where its DNA was found
How strong is each trace?
How to read this: each dot is one detection of this species' DNA in an environmental sample. The confidence meter weighs how many independent studies and places back up the signal — one detection in one study is a hint; many across several studies is solid. Records dated before 2008 (when eDNA methods began) are treated as likely mislabeled and left off the map.