The lemon-bellied flyrobin or lemon-bellied flycatcher (''Microeca flavigaster'') 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

Petroicidae The bird family Petroicidae includes 51 species in 19 genera. All are endemic to Australasia: New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and numerous Pacific Islands as far east as Samoa. For want of an accurate common name, the family is often called th ...

. Found in

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

, and

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...

, its natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s are

subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest Tropical and subtropical moist broadleaf forests (TSMF), also known as tropical moist forest, is a subtropical and tropical forest habitat type defined by the World Wide Fund for Nature. Description TSMF is generally found in large, discont ...

s and subtropical or tropical

mangrove forest Mangrove forests, also called mangrove swamps, mangrove thickets or mangals, are productive wetlands that occur in coastal intertidal zones. Mangrove forests grow mainly at tropical and subtropical latitudes because mangroves cannot withstand fr ...

Taxonomy

John Gould described the species in 1843 from a specimen from

Port Essington Port Essington is an inlet and historic site located on the Cobourg Peninsula in the Garig Gunak Barlu National Park in Australia's Northern Territory. It was the site of an early attempt at British settlement, but now exists only as a remote ...

in the Northern Territory. The species name 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 ...

word ''flavus'' meaning 'yellow', and

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 ...

''gaster'' meaning 'belly'. Four subspecies are recognised: the nominate ''flavigaster'' is found across the top of the Northern Territory, subspecies ''flavissima'' in Cape York and New Guinea, subspecies ''laetissima'' along the central-northern Queensland coast, and subspecies ''tormenti'' in the

Kimberley Kimberly or Kimberley may refer to: Places and historical events Australia * Kimberley (Western Australia) ** Roman Catholic Diocese of Kimberley * Kimberley Warm Springs, Tasmania * Kimberley, Tasmania a small town * County of Kimberley, a ...

of northwestern Australia. The two Queensland subspecies are separated by the

Atherton Tableland The Atherton Tableland is a fertile plateau which is part of the Great Dividing Range in Queensland, Australia. The principal river flowing across the plateau is the Barron River. It was dammed to form an irrigation reservoir named Lake Tina ...

and Burdekin-Lynd Divide, and are possibly kept apart by a population of the

jacky winter The jacky winter (''Microeca fascinans'') is a small grey-brown robin found commonly throughout Australia and also in Papua New Guinea. The jacky winter acquired its name due to rapid and strong vocalisations, which sound like ''jacky-jacky wint ...

(''Microeca fascinans'') that replaces it in some areas. Genetic analysis shows that the two Queensland subspecies are very closely related, but that there is quite a large separation from subspecies ''flavigaster''. Subspecies ''tormenti'' was not sampled in that study. Subspecies ''tormenti'', known as the Kimberley flyrobin, was considered a separate species for many years. It is unusual in that it lacks the yellow pigmentation of the other subspecies.

Les 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 ...

and Walter Boles reclassified it as a subspecies, since hybrids between subspecies ''tormenti'' and ''flavigaster'' have been found in the vicinity of Cambridge Gulf—between the ranges of the two subspecies. As well as lemon-bellied flyrobin, the species is also commonly known as lemon-breasted flycatcher (from when belly was thought crude), yellow-bellied flycatcher, yellow-breasted flycatcher, or brown-tailed flycatcher (subspecies ''tormenti'').

Description

The adult lemon-bellied flyrobin is around long. The sexes have similar plumage. The nominate subspecies ''flavigaster'' has lemon yellow underparts, a white throat, grey face with a white eyebrow stripe, and olive-brown upperparts. Subspecies ''tormenti'' has white underparts, more greyish upperparts, has a longer bill and tail and is larger overall. Subspecies ''flavissima'' resembles ''flavigaster'' but has a more obvious yellow tinge to the upperparts, throat, yellow eyebrow and a shorter tail, while ''laetissima'' more closely resembles ''flavigaster'', but has a shorter tail and bill and is larger overall.

Distribution and habitat

The species ranges from the Ord River in the west to coastal Queensland, and is found in mangroves, paperbark swamp forests, and woodland.

Feeding

The lemon-bellied flyrobin is an insectivore, hunting its prey in the foliage or dead branches of trees and shrubs and only rarely on the ground. Fieldwork in Kakadu National Park found that it occasionally caught large insects over in length; insects were generally caught by the bird hawking or sallying.

Breeding

Breeding throughout its range, the lemon-bellied flyrobin breeds from August to February, raising one or two broods a season. The nest is a small dish-shaped structure made of bark and grasses in the fork of a tree. A single egg measuring is laid, pale blue with brownish markings.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q426685 lemon-bellied flyrobin Birds of New Guinea Birds of the Northern Territory Birds of Queensland lemon-bellied flyrobin Taxonomy articles created by Polbot