European stonechat
| European stonechat | |
|---|---|
_male,_Beaulieu,_Hampshire.jpg) |
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| Male in Hampshire, UK | |
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| Female in Belgium
Recorded in Surrey
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Muscicapidae |
| Genus: | Saxicola |
| Species: | S. rubicola |
| Binomial name | |
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Saxicola rubicola (Linnaeus, 1766) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Saxicola torquatus rubicola |
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Saxicola torquatus rubicola
The European stonechat (Saxicola rubicola) is a small passerine bird that was formerly classed as a subspecies of the common stonechat. Long considered a member of the thrush family, Turdidae, genetic evidence has placed it and its relatives in the Old World flycatcher family, Muscicapidae.
Two weakly defined subspecies are currently accepted:
The two subspecies differ in colour intensity following Gloger's rule, with S. r. rubicola paler and with larger white patches in the drier European continental and mediterranean climates, and S. r. hibernans darker brown with less white in the humid Atlantic oceanic climate. They intergrade broadly where their ranges meet, from southeastern England south through France and Spain, and many individuals are not identifiable to subspecies. Extreme examples of S. r. rubicola from the driest southern areas of its range such as the Algarve and Sicily are particularly pale and with a large white rump, and can be very similar to Siberian stonechats in appearance.nDNA microsatellite fingerprinting reveals a very small degree of separation between the two subspecies.
In the past, the European stonechat was generally considered conspecific with the Siberian stonechat and African stonechat, lumped together as common stonechat S. torquatus. A new review adding mtDNA sequence and nuclear DNA microsatellite fingerprinting evidence strongly supports their separation into distinct species. Due to a misunderstanding of the rules of Zoological nomenclature, for a short time the name S. torquatus was erroneously used for the European stonechat rather than the African stonechat.
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Wikipedia