Brown-chested alethe explained
The brown-chested alethe (Chamaetylas poliocephala) is a species of bird in the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae. It has a discontinuous range of presence across the African tropical rainforest.
Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest.
Taxonomy
The brown-chested alethe was formally described in 1850 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte based on a manuscript by Coenraad Temminck. Bonaparte gave the binomial name as Trichophorus (Griniger) and the locality as Africa. The locality has been restricted to the island of Bioko (formally Fernando Po).[1] [2] The specific epithet combines the Ancient Greek polios meaning "grey" with -kephalos meaning "-headed".[3] The brown-chested alethe is now one of four species placed in the genus Chamaetylas that was introduced in 1860 by Ferdinand Heine.[4]
Nine subspecies are recognised:[4]
- C. p. poliocephala (Bonaparte, 1850) – Sierra Leone to Ghana
- C. p. compsonota (Cassin, 1859) – south Nigeria to southwest Central African Republic, northwest Angola and Bioko
- C. p. hallae (Traylor, 1961) – west Angola
- C. p. giloensis (Cunningham-Van Someren & Schifter, 1981) – south Sudan
- C. p. carruthersi (Ogilvie-Grant, 1906) – southeast Central African Republic, northeast DR Congo, Uganda and west Kenya
- C. p. akeleyae (Dearborn, 1909) – central Kenya
- C. p. vandeweghei (Prigogine, 1984) – Rwanda and Burundi
- C. p. kungwensis (Moreau, 1941) – west Tanzania
- C. p. ufipae (Moreau, 1942) – southeast DR Congo and southwest Tanzania
Notes and References
- Book: Bonaparte, Charles Lucien . Charles Lucien Bonaparte . 1850 . Conspectus Generum Avium . 1 . Latin . E.J. Brill . Leiden . 262 .
- Book: Mayr . Ernst . Ernst Mayr . Paynter . Raymond A. Jr . 1964 . Check-List of Birds of the World . 10 . Museum of Comparative Zoology . Cambridge, Massachusetts . 63 .
- Book: Jobling, James A. . 2010. The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names . Christopher Helm . London . 978-1-4081-2501-4 . 312 .
- Web site: Gill . Frank . Frank Gill (ornithologist) . Donsker . David . Rasmussen . Pamela . Pamela Rasmussen . July 2023 . Chats, Old World flycatchers . IOC World Bird List Version 13.2 . International Ornithologists' Union . 23 July 2023.