Tarsiger
Genus of birds
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tarsiger is a genus of eight species of birds in the family Muscicapidae. They are small, mostly brightly coloured insectivorous birds native to Asia and (one species) northeastern Europe; four of the six species are confined to the Sino-Himalayan mountain system.[1] The genus has sometimes been included within the related genus Luscinia, but the species have been found to form a distinct monophyletic group.[2]
| Tarsiger | |
|---|---|
| |
| Collared bush robin (Tarsiger johnstoniae) | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Muscicapidae |
| Subfamily: | Saxicolinae |
| Genus: | Tarsiger Hodgson, 1845 |
| Type species | |
| Tarsiger chrysaeus (golden bush robin) Hodgson, 1845 | |
Taxonomy
The genus Tarsiger was introduced in 1845 by the English naturalist Brian Houghton Hodgson with the golden bush robin as the type species.[3][4] The genus name is from Ancient Greek tarsos, "flat of the foot" and Latin gerere, "to carry".[5]
The genus contains the following eight species:[6]
- White-browed bush robin (Tarsiger indicus)
- Taiwan bush robin (Tarsiger formosanus) (split from T. indicus)
- Golden bush robin (Tarsiger chrysaeus)
- Collared bush robin (Tarsiger johnstoniae)
- Rufous-breasted bush robin (Tarsiger hyperythrus)
- Red-flanked bluetail (Tarsiger cyanurus)
- Qilian bluetail (Tarsiger albocoeruleus) (split from T. cyanurus)[7]
- Himalayan bluetail (Tarsiger rufilatus)
The Himalayan bluetail was formerly treated as a subspecies of the red-flanked bluetail.[1] It was split on the basis of its more intense plumage colours, and its ecology and behaviour, being a short-distance altitudinal migrant not a long-distance migrant.[8]
The phylogenetic relationships between the species were determined in a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2022:[7]
| Tarsiger |
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
_I-Haryana_IMG_8045.jpg){kind=small}