The northern chestnut-tailed antbird (''Sciaphylax castanea'') is a species of bird in the family Thamnophilidae. It is found in the

Amazon Rainforest The Amazon rainforest, Amazon jungle or ; es, Selva amazónica, , or usually ; french: Forêt amazonienne; nl, Amazoneregenwoud. In English, the names are sometimes capitalized further, as Amazon Rainforest, Amazon Forest, or Amazon Jungle. ...

in northeastern

Peru , image_flag = Flag of Peru.svg , image_coat = Escudo nacional del Perú.svg , other_symbol = Great Seal of the State , other_symbol_type = Seal (emblem), National seal , national_motto = "Fi ...

and far eastern

Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...

. The northern chestnut-tailed antbird was originally described by the American ornithologist John Zimmer in 1932 as a subspecies of the

southern chestnut-tailed antbird The southern chestnut-tailed antbird (''Sciaphylax hemimelaena'') is a species of passerine bird in the family Thamnophilidae. It is found in the Amazon Rainforest in far southern Colombia, eastern Peru, northern Bolivia, and western and central ...

with the

trinomial name In biology, trinomial nomenclature refers to names for taxa below the rank of species. These names have three parts. The usage is different in zoology and botany. In zoology In zoological nomenclature, a trinomen (), trinominal name, or ternary ...

''Myrmeciza hemimelaena castanea''. A

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 2013 found that the genus ''

Myrmeciza The white-bellied antbird (''Myrmeciza longipes''), is a passerine bird which breeds in the tropical New World from Panama to northern Brazil and in Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad an ...

'', as then defined, 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 northern chestnut-tailed antbird and the southern chestnut-tailed antbird were moved to a newly erected genus ''

Sciaphylax ''Sciaphylax'' is a genus of passerine birds in the family Thamnophilidae. The genus contains two species: * Southern chestnut-tailed antbird (''Sciaphylax hemimelaena'') * Northern chestnut-tailed antbird (''Sciaphylax castanea'') These spe ...

''.

Description

''Sciaphylax castanea is'' 11–12 cm in length and weighs 16–17 grams.Northern Chestnut-tailed Antbird (''Sciaphylax castanea'')
en ''Handbook of the Birds of the World - Alive'' (en inglés). Consultada el 29 de abril de 2017. It is similar to its congener ''Sciaphylax hemimelaena, but'' differentiated by their vocalisations. The tail is short. The male has a dark gray head and neck and reddish-brown upper parts, the wing coverts are blackish with white or yellowish-brown tips, the tail is rufous-brown; the throat and breast are black with gray and brown on the sides and flanks, the midribs are white. The female is similar to the male, but paler; the throat and breast are chestnut to rufous orange, the belly is white tinged with yellowish brown.. 2009. ''Myrmeciza castanea'' y ''Myrmeciza hemimelaena'', p. 365, lámina 31(8), en ''Field guide to the songbirds of South America: the passerines'' – edición – (Mildred Wyatt-World series in ornithology). University of Texas Press, Austin (en inglés). ISBN 978-0-292-71748-0

References

northern chestnut-tailed antbird Birds of the Ecuadorian Amazon Birds of the Peruvian Amazon northern chestnut-tailed antbird northern chestnut-tailed antbird Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Thamnophilidae-stub