Chestnut-tailed Antbird

About the Chestnut-tailed Antbird

The southern chestnut-tailed antbird, or chestnut-tailed antbird, (Sciaphylax hemimelaena) is a species of passerine bird in subfamily Thamnophilinae of family Thamnophilidae, the "typical antbirds". It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, and Peru.

The southern chestnut-tailed antbird has a complicated taxonomic history. It was originally described by the English zoologist Philip Sclater in 1857 and given the binomial name Myrmeciza emimelaena. It later acquired the English name "chestnut-tailed antbird" and its current specific epithet hemimelaena. By the early twentieth century it had two recognized subspecies. In 1932 a third subspecies, M. h. castanea, was described. That subspecies was much later recognized as the separate species M. castanea. Some taxonomic systems call it the "northern chestnut-tailed antbird" and the reduced M. hemimelaena the "southern chestnut-tailed antbird". Other systems retained "chestnut-tailed antbird" for M. hemimelaena and called the newly-separated M. castanea "Zimmer's antbird".

A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 found that genus Myrmeciza, as then defined, was polyphyletic. In the resulting rearrangement to... Wikipedia →