The wattled ploughbill (''Eulacestoma nigropectus'') is a small bird from

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu Hiri Motu, also known as Police Motu, Pidgin Motu, or just Hiri, is a language of Papua New Guinea, which is spoken in surrounding areas of Port Moresby (Capital of Papua New Guinea). It is a simplified version of ...

. It is the only member of the monotypic genus ''Eulacestoma'' and family Eulacestomatidae. It is also known as the wattled shrike-tit or ploughshare tit.

Taxonomy

The wattled ploughbill was formally described in 1894 by the English naturalist

Charles Walter De Vis Charles Walter de Vis (Birmingham, England, 9 May 1829 – Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 30 April 1915),

. He introduced a new

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

''Eulacestoma'' and coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Eulacestoma nigropectus''. The genus name combines the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

''eulaka'' meaning "ploughshare" with ''stoma'' meaning "mouth". The specific epithet is 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 ...

''niger'' meaning "black" and ''pectus'' meaning "breast". The wattled ploughbill was long thought to be related to the whistlers (

Pachycephalidae The Pachycephalidae are a family of bird species that includes the whistlers, shrikethrushes, and three of the pitohuis, and is part of the ancient Australo-Papuan radiation of songbirds. The family includes 64 species that are separated into f ...

), and shriketits (formerly Pachycephalidae, now often treated as its own family). In particular the wattled ploughbill and

crested shriketit The crested shriketit (''Falcunculus frontatus'') or Australian shriketit, is a bird Endemism in birds, endemic to Australia where it inhabits open eucalypt forest and woodland. It is the only species contained within both the family (biology), f ...

share a similar large bill. Genetic studies have shown that these birds are not closely related, and the wattled ploughbill is instead more closely related to the

sittella The sittellas are a family, Neosittidae, of small passerine birds found only in Australasia. They resemble nuthatches, but whilst they were considered to be in that family for many years they are now afforded their own family. They do not migrat ...

s. Because of its genetic and morphological uniqueness, in 2014

Richard Schodde Richard Schodde, OAM (born 23 September 1936) is an Australian botanist and ornithologist. Schodde studied at the University of Adelaide, where he received a BSc (Hons) in 1960 and a PhD in 1970. During the 1960s he was a botanist with the C ...

and

Leslie Christidis Leslie Christidis (born 30 May 1959), also simply known as Les Christidis, is an Australian ornithologist. His main research field is the evolution and systematics of birds. He has been director of Southern Cross University National Marine Scienc ...

placed it in its own monotypic family Eulacestomatidae. The wattled ploughbill is a monotypic species, meaning it has no accepted

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 ...

. A subspecies ''clara'' has been proposed, but it is not reliably distinct from other birds in this species.

Description

It is approximately , olive-brown

songbird A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds (Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 500 ...

with a strong, thick, wedge-shaped black

bill Bill(s) may refer to: Common meanings * Banknote, paper cash (especially in the United States) * Bill (law), a proposed law put before a legislature * Invoice, commercial document issued by a seller to a buyer * Bill, a bird or animal's beak Plac ...

. It weighs . The sexes are different. The male has black underparts, an almost golden forehead, black wings with golden scapulars, and a pair of large circular pink wattles on the cheek. The female has olive green plumage and pale olive below. Only the adult male has wattles.

Distribution and habitat

The wattled ploughbill is distributed and

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 elsew ...

to central mountain ranges of

Behaviour

The diet consists mainly of

insects Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs of j ...

. The species feeds from the forest floor to up to , from the understory to the mid-level of the forest. It particularly favours groves of bamboo as a micro-habitat for feeding. It forages on branches and twigs, gleaning insects from the surface and prising off bark to expose prey. The species will readily join

mixed-species feeding 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 ...

Conservation

Widespread throughout its large range, the wattled ploughbill is evaluated as least concern on 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 ...

of Threatened Species.

References

* del Hoyo, J.; Elliot, A. & Christie D. (editors). (2007). ''

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 ...

''. Volume 12: Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees. Lynx Edicions.

External links

BirdLife Species Factsheet
{{Taxonbar, from=Q2911527 Birds of New Guinea wattled ploughbill Passeri