The creamy-bellied gnatcatcher (''Polioptila lactea'') 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 Polioptilidae. It is found in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

, and

Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...

Taxonomy and systematics

The creamy-bellied gnatcatcher is

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 "unispec ...

. It has occasionally been thought to be

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organ ...

with the tropical gnatcatcher (''P. plumbea'').Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 23 May 2021. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved May 24, 2021

Description

The creamy-bellied gnatcatcher is long and weighs approximately . The male has a bluish-black cap and white lores and

supercilium The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...

. Its upperparts are dark slate blue. Its long tail's central feathers are black and the outermost white with those between being black and white. Its cheeks and underparts are pale yellowish transitioning to white on the lower belly. The female and juvenile are similar to the male but with slate gray crowns.Atwood, J. L. and S. B. Lerman (2020). Creamy-bellied Gnatcatcher (''Polioptila lactea''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.crbgna1.01 retrieved May 29, 2021

Distribution and habitat

The creamy-bellied gnatcatcher is found in southern Brazil from

Mato Grosso do Sul Mato Grosso do Sul () is one of the Midwestern states of Brazil. Neighboring Brazilian states are (from north clockwise) Mato Grosso, Goiás, Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Paraná. It also borders the countries of Paraguay, to the southwest, and ...

and

Rio de Janeiro Rio de Janeiro ( , , ; literally 'River of January'), or simply Rio, is the capital of the state of the same name, Brazil's third-most populous state, and the second-most populous city in Brazil, after São Paulo. Listed by the GaWC as a b ...

states south to Santa Catarina state and adjoining southeastern Paraguay and northeastern Argentina. It inhabits several biomes including open humid forest and its edges, temperate rainforest, semi-deciduous forest, and scrublands. It elevation it usually occurs below .

Behavior

Feeding

The creamy-bellied gnatcatcher's diet is not well known but is probably small insects and spiders. It forages by gleaning and hover-gleaning foliage, alone and in

mixed-species foraging flock A mixed-species feeding flock, also termed a mixed-species foraging flock, mixed hunting party or informally bird wave, is a flock of usually insectivorous birds of different species that join each other and move together while foraging. These ar ...

Breeding

Almost nothing is known about the creamy-bellied gnatcatcher's breeding

phenology Phenology is the study of periodic events in biological life cycles and how these are influenced by seasonality, seasonal and interannual variations in climate, as well as environmental factor, habitat factors (such as elevation). Examples includ ...

. One nest has been described. It was built by both sexes of moss and leaves in the crotch of a branch near the top of a high tree.

Vocalization

The creamy-bellied gnatcatcher's song is "a simple, rather fast repetition...''tee tee tee tee swee swee swee''

Its call is ''spie'

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

has assessed the creamy-bellied gnatcatcher as

Near Threatened A near-threatened species is a species which has been categorized as "Near Threatened" (NT) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as that may be vulnerable to endangerment in the near future, but it does not currently qualify fo ...

. "This species is restricted to lowland forest in a region where habitat destruction has been widespread...and existing populations are likely to be highly fragmented."

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q841123 creamy-bellied gnatcatcher Birds of the Atlantic Forest creamy-bellied gnatcatcher Taxonomy articles created by Polbot