''Microspingus'' is a

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 ...

of warbler-like birds in the tanager family Thraupidae. They are found in highland forest in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

Taxonomy and species list

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 published in 2014 found that the genus '' Poospiza'' was polyphyletic. In the resulting rearrangement to create

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

genera the genus ''Microspingus'' was resurrected. It had been introduced in 1874 by the Polish zoologist Władysław Taczanowski with the three-striped hemispingus as the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

. 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 ...

''mikros'' meaning "small" with ''spingos'' meaning "finch". The genus ''Microspingus'' is the

sister taxon In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and t ...

to a clade containing the black-backed bush tanager in the monospecific genus '' Urothraupis'' and the Pardusco in the monospecific genus '' Nephelornis''. The genus contains eight species:

References

Bird genera Taxa named by Władysław Taczanowski {{Thraupidae-stub