Willard's sooty boubou (''Laniarius willardi'') is a species of bird in the family Malaconotidae, found in the Albertine Rift. It is found in

Burundi Burundi (, ), officially the Republic of Burundi ( rn, Repuburika y’Uburundi ; Swahili language, Swahili: ''Jamuhuri ya Burundi''; French language, French: ''République du Burundi'' ), is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley at the ...

and Uganda and has uniform black plumage.

Description

The species was first described in 2010, based on five specimens, all collected by the

Field Museum of Natural History The Field Museum of Natural History (FMNH), also known as The Field Museum, is a natural history museum in Chicago, Illinois, and is one of the largest such museums in the world. The museum is popular for the size and quality of its educational ...

and originally identified as the

Mountain sooty boubou The mountain sooty boubou (''Laniarius poensis''), western boubou or mountain boubou, is a species of bird in the family Malaconotidae. Taxonomy It was formerly considered conspecific with the Albertine sooty boubou (''Laniarius holomelas''), ...

(''L. poensis''). Four were collected in 1997 on a private banana plantation in southern Uganda, and the fifth collected in

in 1991. The species main distinct trait is its gray-to-blue-gray eye color, in comparison to the reddish-black to black eye color typically found in the Mountain sooty boubou. However, specimens collected as far back as 1910 were identified as having gray irises, but categorized as ''L. poensis''. The species was also identified as being genetically diagnosable, differing 11.5% in uncorrected sequence divergence from the co-located

Albertine sooty boubou The Albertine sooty boubou (''Laniarius holomelas'') is a species of bird in the family Malaconotidae. It is found in Rwanda, Burundi and adjacent areas of Uganda and Democratic Republic of the Congo. It was formerly considered as a subspecies ...

. The species is named in honor of Field Museum of Natural History collections manager David Willard, with its common name also reflecting its plumage. The species is also considered to be potentially threatened, due to occurring in a narrow elevational band between 1,200 and 2,000 meters that is heavily deforested for tea plantations.

References

Bibliography

*Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, B.L. Sullivan, C. L. Wood, and D. Roberson. 2011. The Clements checklist of birds of the world: Version 6.6. * Willard's sooty boubou Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa Willard's sooty boubou {{Malaconotidae-stub