Chestnut-backed Antbird

About the Chestnut-backed Antbird

The chestnut-backed antbird (Poliocrania exsul) is a passerine bird in subfamily Thamnophilinae of family Thamnophilidae, the "typical antbirds". It is found in Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and Panama.

The chestnut-backed antbird was described by the English zoologist Philip Sclater in 1859 and given the binomial name Myrmeciza exsul. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 found that the genus Myrmeciza, as then defined, was polyphyletic. In the resulting rearrangement to create monophyletic genera, the chestnut-backed antbird was moved to a newly erected genus Poliocrania. The name of the new genus combines the Ancient Greek words polios "ash-gray" and kranion "head" or "skull". The chestnut-backed antbird is the only member of genus Poliocrania.

The International Ornithological Congress, the Clements taxonomy, and both the North and South American Classification Committees of the American Ornithological Society assign these five subspecies to the chestnut-backed antbird:

P. e. exsul (Sclater, PL, 1859) P. e. occidentalis (Cherrie, 1891) P. e. cassini (Ridgway, 1908) P. e. niglarus (Wetmore, 1962) P. e. maculifer (Hellmayr... Wikipedia →