Blackish Antbird

About the Blackish Antbird

The blackish antbird (Cercomacroides nigrescens) is a species of passerine bird in subfamily Thamnophilinae of family Thamnophilidae, the "typical antbirds". It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, and Suriname.

The blackish antbird was described by the German ornithologists Jean Cabanis and Ferdinand Heine in 1860 and given the binomial name Percnostola nigrescens. The specific epithet is from the Latin nigrescens "blackish" (from nigrescere "to become black"). The antbird was subsequently included in the genus Cercomacra but a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that Cercomacra was polyphyletic. The genus was split to create two monophyletic genera, and six species including the blackish antbird were moved to the newly erected genus Cercomacroides.

The blackish antbird has these five subspecies: C. n. nigrescens (Cabanis & Heine, 1860) C. n. aequatorialis (Zimmer, JT, 1931) C. n. notata (Zimmer, JT, 1931) C. n. approximans (Pelzeln, 1868) C. n. ochrogyna (Snethlage, E, 1928)

What is now the riparian antbird (C. fuscicauda) was previously treated as a sixth subspecies of the blackish antbird but... Wikipedia →