Black-throated Antbird

About the Black-throated Antbird

The black-throated antbird (Myrmophylax atrothorax) 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, Suriname, and Venezuela.

The black-throated antbird was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux in 1779. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Formicarius attothorax in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. (The specific epithet's spelling was later corrected to atrothorax). The type locality is the city of Cayenne in French Guiana.

The black-throated antbird was usually placed in the genus Myrmeciza but a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 found that the genus was polyphyletic. In the resulting... Wikipedia →