The blue-crowned laughingthrush or Courtois's laughingbird (''Pterorhinus courtoisi'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in the family

Leiothrichidae The laughingthrushes are a family, Leiothrichidae, of Old World passerine birds. They are diverse in size and coloration. These are birds of tropical areas, with the greatest variety in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The entire fami ...

. It is now found only in

Jiangxi Jiangxi (; ; formerly romanized as Kiangsi or Chianghsi) is a landlocked province in the east of the People's Republic of China. Its major cities include Nanchang and Jiujiang. Spanning from the banks of the Yangtze river in the north int ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. Until recently, this critically endangered species was generally treated as a

subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

of the yellow-throated laughingthrush, but that species has a pale grey (not bluish) crown. The blue-crowned laughingthrush was formerly placed in the genus ''

Garrulax ''Garrulax'' is a genus of passerine birds in the laughingthrush family Leiothrichidae. Taxonomy The genus ''Garrulax'' was erected by the French naturalist René Lesson in 1831. The type species was designated in 1961 as the rufous-fronted lau ...

'' but following the publication of a comprehensive

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study in 2018, it was moved to the resurrected genus ''

Pterorhinus ''Pterorhinus'' is a genus of passerine birds in the laughingthrush family Leiothrichidae. Taxonomy The genus was erected by the English zoologist Robert Swinhoe in 1868 with the plain laughingthrush (''Pterorhinus davidi'') as the type species. ...

''. The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

was chosen to honour the French missionary to China Frédéric Courtois (1860-1928). The

nominate subspecies In biological classification, subspecies is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (morphology), but that can successfully interbreed. Not all species ...

was only rediscovered in 2000, in

Wuyuan County, Jiangxi Wuyuan County () is a county in northeastern Jiangxi province, People's Republic of China, bordering the provinces of Zhejiang to the east and Anhui to the north. It is under the jurisdiction of the prefecture-level city of Shangrao. Wuyuan, on th ...

, but remains very rare with a total wild population of approximately 200 individuals. The subspecies ''G. courtoisi simaoensis'' has not been encountered in the wild since the

type specimen In biology, a type is a particular wiktionary:en:specimen, specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to a ...

s were collected in Simao,

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is ...

in 1956. More than 100 blue-crowned laughingthrushes are kept in

zoo A zoo (short for zoological garden; also called an animal park or menagerie) is a facility in which animals are kept within enclosures for public exhibition and often bred for Conservation biology, conservation purposes. The term ''zoological g ...

s (where part of a captive breeding program) and private

aviculture Aviculture is the practice of keeping and breeding birds, especially of wild birds in captivity. Types There are various reasons that people get involved in aviculture. Some people breed birds to preserve a species. Some people breed parrots a ...

, but it is unclear what subspecies they belong to. A recent review failed to support the distinction of two separate subspecies, leading to ''simaoensis'' being treated as a

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

of the nominate in

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. T ...

. This bird was erroneously listed as a species of least concern in the 2006

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 ...

. Actually, it seems close to

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

ion at least in the wild, and its status was thus corrected to critically endangered in the 2007 Red List issue.See BirdLife International (2007a,b).

Footnotes

References

* BirdLife International (2007a):
2006-2007 Red List status changes
]. Retrieved 2007-AUG-26. * BirdLife International (2007b)
Blue-crowned Laughingthrush - BirdLife Species Factsheet
Retrieved 2007-AUG-28. {{Taxonbar, from=Q1590472 Pterorhinus, blue-crowned laughingthrush Birds of South China Endemic birds of China Critically endangered fauna of Asia

blue-crowned laughingthrush The blue-crowned laughingthrush or Courtois's laughingbird (''Pterorhinus courtoisi'') is a species of bird in the family Leiothrichidae. It is now found only in Jiangxi, China. Until recently, this critically endangered species was generally ...

Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN Critically endangered fauna of China

See also

Footnotes

References