The banded honeyeater (''Cissomela pectoralis'') is a species of honeyeater in the family

Meliphagidae The honeyeaters are a large and diverse family, Meliphagidae, of small to medium-sized birds. The family includes the Australian chats, myzomelas, friarbirds, wattlebirds, miners and melidectes. They are most common in Australia and New Gu ...

with a characteristic narrow black band across its white underparts. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found else ...

to tropical northern Australia.

Taxonomy and systematics

The scientific name for the banded honeyeater is ''Cissomela pectoralis (''Gould, 1841). The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of sever ...

was Holotype ANSP 18224 male, Australia: north coast, held in the

Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University The Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, formerly the Academy of Natural Sciences of Philadelphia, is the oldest natural science research institution and museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1812, by many of the leading natura ...

Philadelphia Philadelphia, often called Philly, is the List of municipalities in Pennsylvania#Municipalities, largest city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the List of United States cities by population, sixth-largest city i ...

. The banded honeyeater was previously placed in the genus '' Certhionyx'', but was moved to the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

genus '' Cissomela'' after a molecular phylogenetic analysis, published in 2011, showed that the original genus was

polyphyletic A polyphyletic group is an assemblage of organisms or other evolving elements that is of mixed evolutionary origin. The term is often applied to groups that share similar features known as homoplasies, which are explained as a result of conver ...

. The

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

name ''Cissomela'' (Bonaparte, 1854) means "honey magpie" from the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

''kissa'' for 'magpie', thus referring to the black and white colouring, and ''mela'' meaning 'honey' for its feeding habits. The specific epithet ''pectoralis'' comes from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

''pectoris'' for 'breast', referring to the distinctive banded breast of this bird.

Description

The banded honeyeater is a small, pied honeyeater with a distinctive black breast band across white underparts. It has a black back, tail and head, a long curved bill and long legs. It has a wingspan of , the bill measures , the body length is and it weighs .

Behaviour and ecology

The

IUCN Red List The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, also known as the IUCN Red List or Red Data Book, founded in 1964, is the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biol ...

rating, th
Northern Territory Conservation Status
an
Queensland Conservation Status
for this species is

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as evaluated as not being a focus of species conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wild. T ...

(LC). The banded honeyeater inhabits tropical grassy woodland, open forests,

mangrove A mangrove is a shrub or tree that grows in coastal saline or brackish water. The term is also used for tropical coastal vegetation consisting of such species. Mangroves are taxonomically diverse, as a result of convergent evolution in severa ...

s and '' Melaleuca'' swamps. It feeds on the nectar of eucalypts and some other open flowers, such as ''

Grevillea ''Grevillea'', commonly known as spider flowers, is a genus of about 360 species of evergreen flowering plants in the family Proteaceae. Plants in the genus ''Grevillea'' are shrubs, rarely trees, with the leaves arranged alternately along the b ...

s'', ''

paperbark ''Melaleuca'' () is a genus of nearly 300 species of plants in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae, commonly known as paperbarks, honey-myrtles or tea-trees (although the last name is also applied to species of ''Leptospermum''). They range in size f ...

s'' and ''

Bauhinia ''Bauhinia'' () is a large genus of flowering plants in the subfamily Cercidoideae and tribe Bauhinieae, in the large flowering plant family Fabaceae, with a pantropical distribution. The genus was named after the Bauhin brothers Gaspard and J ...

s'', plus insects. It usually moves in pairs or small groups, but large groups can gather when blossom is plentiful. It is a blossom nomad or can have seasonal movements in various parts of its range, which is restricted to tropical northern Australia.

Gallery

File:Banded Honeyeater.jpg, Illustration of five Meliphagidae species from the Companion to Gould's Handbook; banded honeyeater top left File:Banded Honeyeater A.jpg, Banded honeyeater, Parry's Lagoon near Wyndham, WA, 2019

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q572777 banded honeyeater Birds of the Northern Territory Birds of Queensland Endemic birds of Australia banded honeyeater Taxonomy articles created by Polbot banded honeyeater