The southern black tit or simply black tit (''Melaniparus niger'') is a species of bird in the tit family Paridae, which is native to woodland habitats in southern Africa.

Subspecies

Three subspecies are recognized: * ''Melaniparus niger niger'' – southernmost Mozambique to

Eswatini Eswatini ( ; ss, eSwatini ), officially the Kingdom of Eswatini and formerly named Swaziland ( ; officially renamed in 2018), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its no ...

KwaZulu-Natal KwaZulu-Natal (, also referred to as KZN and known as "the garden province") is a province of South Africa that was created in 1994 when the Zulu bantustan of KwaZulu ("Place of the Zulu" in Zulu) and Natal Province were merged. It is locate ...

and

Eastern Cape The Eastern Cape is one of the provinces of South Africa. Its capital is Bhisho, but its two largest cities are East London and Gqeberha. The second largest province in the country (at 168,966 km2) after Northern Cape, it was formed in ...

* ''Melaniparus niger xanthostomus'' – southern Angola to northern Namibia, northern Botswana, northwestern Zimbabwe, southern Zambia and southern Tanzania * ''Melaniparus niger ravidus'' – eastern Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, eastern Botswana and northern South Africa

Range and habitat

It occurs chiefly in tropical and subtropical savanna woodland, in a semicircular arc from Angola to the

, South Africa. It prefers woodland dominated by broad-leaved trees, most importantly miombo, '' Combretum'' species, and ''

Burkea africana ''Burkea africana'', the wild syringa ( bm, siri), is a deciduous, medium-sized, spreading, flat-topped tree belonging to the subfamily Caesalpinioideae of the family Fabaceae. The genus was named in honour of Joseph Burke, the botanist and col ...

''.''Parus niger'' (Southern Black Tit)
/ref> It is especially common in the woodlands of western Zimbabwe, where densities can reach as high as fifty birds per square kilometre.

Description

The southern black tit, unlike parids of the Northern Hemisphere or other local species, is almost entirely monotone in colour and sexually somewhat dimorphic,Newman; Kenneth;
Newman's Birds of Southern Africa
'; p. 328. with the female being greyish and the male very distinctly blue-black in colour. It can be distinguished from the white-winged tit and

Carp's tit Carp's tit (''Melaniparus carpi'') or Carp's black tit, is a species of bird in the family Paridae. Some authors consider it a subspecies of the black tit. It is found throughout the Namibian savanna woodlands and the southern Angolan mopane wo ...

by having no white rim in its tailHarrap, Simon; ''Tits, Nuthatches and Treecreepers''; p. 80. and is around in total length including the tail.

Food

Like all tits, it feeds chiefly on insects, and is a voracious consumer of wasps in its favoured habitat; however, it has unusually for a parid been known to take

nectar Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists ...

and fruiting

fig The fig is the edible fruit of ''Ficus carica'', a species of small tree in the flowering plant family Moraceae. Native to the Mediterranean and western Asia, it has been cultivated since ancient times and is now widely grown throughout the world ...

Breeding

Breeding occurs during the summer wet season, but its initiation is very varied and the number of broods reared depends on the consistency of rainfall. The breeding system of the southern black tit has been intensively studied and is often regarded Skutch; Alexander Frank (author) and Gardner, Dana (illustrator) ''Helpers at birds' nests: a worldwide survey of cooperative breeding and related behavior'' pp. 139-142. Published 1987 by University of Iowa Press. as a classic example of the differences in breeding strategies between warm regions with unpredictable rainfall and cold regions with severe winters. Unlike the great tit or blue tit which can provision up to twenty-five nestlings per year in unassisted pairs, the southern black tit, living on a much poorer food supply, can as an unassisted pair seldom provision even ''one'' nestling in a breeding season. As a result, most males must stay in the parental territory for several years to help rear the usually three nestlings that each breeding female produces under favourable conditions. An interesting feature of the southern black tit is that the breeding female, who incubates continuously during the fifteen days of incubation and is fed by her mate and the helpers, will mimic venomous snakes when she feels threatened to prevent depredation of the nest.

Longevity

Although the species has been recovered from

ringing Ringing may mean: Vibrations * Ringing (signal), unwanted oscillation of a signal, leading to ringing artifacts * Vibration of a harmonic oscillator ** Bell ringing * Ringing (telephony), the sound of a telephone bell * Ringing (medicine), a ri ...

on only a few occasions and data about survival and longevity are thus useless, it is practically certain that the adult mortality rate is much lower than the 70 to 75 percent mortality of closely related parids in Europe and North America.

Taxonomy

The southern black tit was formerly one of the many species in the genus '' Parus'' but was moved to ''

Melaniparus ''Melaniparus'' is a genus of birds in the tit family. The species were formerly placed in the speciose genus ''Parus'' but were moved to ''Melaniparus'' based on a molecular phylogenetic analysis published in 2013 that showed that the members fo ...

'' after 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 ...

analysis published in 2013 showed that the members of the new genus formed a distinct

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

Gallery

Melaniparus niger xanthostomus, Pilanesberg NP, South Africa 3.jpg Melaniparus niger xanthostomus, Marakele NP, South Africa 4.jpg Melaniparus niger xanthostomus, Marakele NP, South Africa 1.jpg Melaniparus niger xanthostomus, Mowana Lodge, Botswana 2.jpg Southern Black Tit 2015 10 17 16 46 24 9797, crop.jpg

References

External links

* Southern Black Tit
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
{{Taxonbar, from=Q27075372

southern black tit The southern black tit or simply black tit (''Melaniparus niger'') 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 ha ...

Birds of Southern Africa

Taxa named by Louis Jean Pierre Vieillot Taxonomy articles created by Polbot