Tityridae is family of

suboscine The Tyranni (suboscines) are a suborder of passerine birds that includes more than 1,000 species, the large majority of which are South American. It is named after the type genus '' Tyrannus''. These have a different anatomy of the syrinx mus ...

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 th ...

birds found in forest and woodland in the

Neotropics The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

. The 45 species in this family were formerly spread over the families

Tyrannidae The tyrant flycatchers (Tyrannidae) are a family of passerine birds which occur throughout North and South America. They are considered the largest family of birds known to exist in the world, with more than 400 species. They are the most dive ...

Pipridae The manakins are a family, Pipridae, of small suboscine passerine birds. The group contains some 54 species distributed through the American tropics. The name is from Middle Dutch ''mannekijn'' "little man" (also the source of the different bird ...

and Cotingidae (''see

Taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

''). As yet, no widely accepted common name exists for the family, although tityras and allies and tityras, mourners and allies have been used. They are small to medium-sized birds. Under current classification, the family ranges in size from the

buff-throated purpletuft The buff-throated purpletuft (''Iodopleura pipra'') is a small species of South American bird in the family Tityridae. It has traditionally been placed in the cotinga family, but evidence strongly suggest it is better placed in Tityridae, ...

, at and , to the masked tityra, at up to and . Most have relatively short tails and large heads.

Taxonomy and systematics

The family Tityridae (as the subfamily Tityrinae) containing the genera ''Tityra'' and ''Pachyramphus'' was introduced by the English zoologist

George Robert Gray George Robert Gray FRS (8 July 1808 – 6 May 1872) was an English zoologist and author, and head of the ornithological section of the British Museum, now the Natural History Museum, in London for forty-one years. He was the younger brother ...

in 1840. Traditionally, the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

Laniocera ''Laniocera'' is a genus of passerine birds in the family Tityridae. It has traditionally been placed in the cotinga family, but evidence strongly suggest it is better placed in Tityridae,Tyrannidae The tyrant flycatchers (Tyrannidae) are a family of passerine birds which occur throughout North and South America. They are considered the largest family of birds known to exist in the world, with more than 400 species. They are the most dive ...

, the genera ''

Iodopleura The purpletufts (''Iodopleura'') are a genus of birds in the family Tityridae. It has traditionally been placed in the cotinga family, but evidence strongly suggest it is better placed in Tityridae,Laniisoma'', '' Tityra'', ''

Pachyramphus A becard is a bird of the genus ''Pachyramphus'' in the family Tityridae. Taxonomy The genus ''Pachyramphus'' was introduced in 1839 by the English zoologist George Robert Gray in the volume on birds by John Gould that formed part of Charles Dar ...

'' and '' Xenopsaris'' were included in the family Cotingidae, and ''

Schiffornis ''Schiffornis'' is a genus of bird in the family Tityridae. It has traditionally been placed in the manakin family, but evidence strongly suggest it is better placed in Tityridae Tityridae is family of suboscine passerine birds found in fores ...

'' was included in the family

. Three of these genera, ''Tityra'', ''Pachyramphus'' and ''Xenopsaris'', were later moved to Tyrannidae based on the morphology of their

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

and syrinx. The existence of the family Tityridae (although simply treated as a clade) was first proposed in 1989 based on the morphology of several syringeal and skeletal features. The existence of this family has later been confirmed by multiple studies involving both mitochondrial DNA and

nuclear DNA Nuclear DNA (nDNA), or nuclear deoxyribonucleic acid, is the DNA contained within each cell nucleus of a eukaryotic organism. It encodes for the majority of the genome in eukaryotes, with mitochondrial DNA and plastid DNA coding for the rest. I ...

. Evidence suggests there are two basal

clades 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, ...

within this family, the first including the genera ''Schiffornis'', ''Laniocera'', and ''Laniisoma'' (with strong bootstrap support), and the second include ''Iodopleura'', ''Tityra'', ''Xenopsaris'', and ''Pachyramphus'' (with poor bootstrap support). A molecular phylogenetic study of passerine families published in 2019 sampled species from five genera in Tityridae. The resulting tree indicates that if the family Tityridae is defined to include the genera ''

Oxyruncus The sharpbill (''Oxyruncus cristatus'') is a small passerine bird in the family Tityridae. Its range is from the mountainous areas of tropical South America and southern Central America (Panama and Costa Rica). It inhabits the canopy of wet for ...

'', '' Myiobius'' and '' Onychorhynchus'' then it becomes paraphyletic: a clade containing the genera '' Tityra'' and ''

'' is basal to a clade that contains the genera ''Oxyruncus'', ''Myiobius'', ''Onychorhynchus'' and the family

Species

The family contains 45 species divided into 11 genera:

References

* {{Taxonbar, from=Q1069958 Bird families Tyranni Taxa named by George Robert Gray andnbsp;