Black-chinned honeyeater
| Black-chinned honeyeater | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Meliphagidae |
| Genus: | Melithreptus |
| Species: | M. gularis |
| Binomial name | |
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Melithreptus gularis (Gould, 1837) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Melithreptus laetior (Gould, 1875) |
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Melithreptus laetior (Gould, 1875)
The black-chinned honeyeater (Melithreptus gularis) is a species of passerine bird in the family Meliphagidae. It is endemic to Australia. Two subspecies are recognised. Its natural habitats are temperate forests and subtropical or tropical dry forests.
The black-chinned honeyeater was first described by John Gould in 1837 as Haematops gularis. He also described what he called the golden-backed honeyeater (as Melithreptus laetior) of northern Australia in 1875. Frederick George Waterhouse of the South Australian Museum had sent him four skins, writing of their beauty. Gould noted it was clearly closely related to M. gularis but differed in its plumage and smaller size. Richard Schodde united them into a single species in 1975, though Hugh Ford queried this in 1986 as he felt the two forms were as distinct as the yellow-tinted and fuscous honeyeaters that had similar ranges. Schodde countered that the black-chinned and golden-backed honeyeaters shared a much broader zone of hybridization, however. Since then they have been maintained as two subspecies of M. gularis, though Christidis and Boles noted in 2008 that data was limited and more fieldwork and genetic investigation were needed. Genetic data published in 2010 shows the two taxa diverged between 0.3 and 1.2 million years ago, separated by the Carpentarian Barrier, located south of the Gulf of Carpentaria.
The black-chinned honeyeater is a member of the genus Melithreptus with several species, of similar size and (apart from the brown-headed honeyeater) black-headed appearance, in the honeyeater family Meliphagidae. Molecular markers show the black-chinned honeyeater is most closely related to the brown-headed, while the similarly plumaged strong-billed honeyeater was actually an earlier offshoot between 6.7 and 3.4 million years ago. These three species are classified in the subgenus Eidopsarus; they have short sturdy feet, congregate in smaller flocks and live in more forested habitat than the other subgenus, and probe for insects on branches and bark rather than in the foliage.
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Wikipedia