White-throated honeyeater
| White-throated honeyeater | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Meliphagidae |
| Genus: | Melithreptus |
| Species: | M. albogularis |
| Binomial name | |
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Melithreptus albogularis Gould, 1848 |
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The white-throated honeyeater (Melithreptus albogularis) is a bird of the honeyeater family, Meliphagidae, native to New Guinea and eastern and northern Australia. It is 11.5 to 14.5 centimetres (4.5 to 5.7 in) long, olive green above and white below, with a black head, a white patch over the eye and a white stripe at the back of the neck.
John Gould described the white-throated honeyeater in 1848. Its species name comes from the Latin words albus "white", and gula "throat"."
English naturalist Charles Walter De Vis described Melithreptus vinitinctus from a specimen collected by K. Broadbent in the Kimberley in 1884. This was later synonymized with M. albogularis.
Traditionally, two subspecies have been recognised: subspecies albogularis from northwestern Australia, the Northern Territory and Cape York, and subspecies inopinatus from central and southeastern Queensland. However, genetic work published in 2010 surprisingly found that the Carpentarian Barrier (south of the Gulf of Carpentaria) fostered a split between lineages east and west of it in the Pliocene, between 2.4 and 5.2 million years ago, and that a more recent split took place between 1 and 2.8 million years ago in northeastern Queensland. It is this more recent split that corresponds with the ranges of the two subspecies.
The white-throated 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. Within the genus, it is classified in the subgenus Melithreptus, along with the white-naped, black-headed and Gilbert's 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.
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