Gilbert's honeyeater
| Gilbert's honeyeater | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Meliphagidae |
| Genus: | Melithreptus |
| Species: | M. chloropsis |
| Binomial name | |
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Melithreptus chloropsis (Gould, 1844) |
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Gilbert's honeyeater (Melithreptus chloropsis), also known as the Swan River honeyeater or western white-naped honeyeater, is a passerine bird of the honeyeater family Meliphagidae native to south-western Australia. A mid-sized honeyeater, it is olive green above and white below, with a black head, nape and throat and a white patch over the eye and a white crescent-shaped patch on the nape. The bill is brownish-black and the eyes a dull red. The sexes have similar plumage.
Gilbert's honeyeater was originally described by John Gould in 1844, who gave it the species name chloropsis from the Ancient Greek terms chloros "green-yellow" and opsis "eye".Gregory Mathews coined the name Melithreptus whitlocki in 1909.
Treated as a subspecies of the white-naped honeyeater for many years, it was found in a 2010 study to have diverged early on from the lunatus complex. It forms a superspecies with the white-naped and black-headed honeyeaters. It 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. Within the genus, it is classified in the subgenus Melithreptus, along with the white-naped, black-headed and white-throated honeyeater; these all forage for insects in foliage or canopy, rather than bark or branches, congregate in larger flocks, and are found in more open dry sclerophyll forests and savannah. They also have smaller feet and a less prominent or missing nuchal bar.
The next closest relative outside the genus is the much larger but similarly marked blue-faced honeyeater. More recently, DNA analysis has shown honeyeaters to be related to the Pardalotidae (pardalotes), Acanthizidae (Australian warblers, scrubwrens, thornbills, etc.), and the Maluridae (Australian fairy-wrens) in a large Meliphagoidea superfamily.
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Wikipedia