''Sciaphylax'' 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
passerine
A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by t ...
birds in the family
Thamnophilidae.
The genus contains two species:
[
* ]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 ...
(''Sciaphylax hemimelaena'')
* Northern chestnut-tailed antbird (''Sciaphylax castanea'')
These species were formerly included in 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 ...
''. 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 ''Myrmeciza'' was polyphyletic.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 two chestnut-tailed antbirds was moved to a newly erected genus ''Sciaphylax''. 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 ...
is the southern chestnut-tailed antbird.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 ...
words ''skia'' "shadow" and ''phylax'' "a watcher".[
]
References
Bird genera
{{Thamnophilidae-stub