The purple-throated woodstar (''Philodice mitchellii'') is a species of

hummingbird Hummingbirds are birds native to the Americas and comprise the biological family Trochilidae. With about 361 species and 113 genera, they occur from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, but the vast majority of the species are found in the tropics aro ...

in tribe

Mellisugini Mellisugini is one of the three tribes that make up the subfamily Trochilinae in the hummingbird family Trochilidae. The other two tribes in the subfamily are Lampornithini (mountain gems) and Trochilini (emeralds). The informal name "bees" has ...

of subfamily

Trochilinae Trochilinae is one of the six subfamilies that make up the hummingbird family Trochilidae. The subfamily is divided into three tribes: Lampornithini (mountain gems) containing 18 species, Mellisugini (bees) containing 37 species and Trochili ...

, the "bee hummingbirds". It is found in

Colombia Colombia (, ; ), officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country in South America with insular regions in North America—near Nicaragua's Caribbean coast—as well as in the Pacific Ocean. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Car ...

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 ...

, and

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Cos ...

.HBW and BirdLife International (2020) ''Handbook of the Birds of the World and BirdLife International digital checklist of the birds of the world'' Version 5. Available at: http://datazone.birdlife.org/userfiles/file/Species/Taxonomy/HBW-BirdLife_Checklist_v5_Dec20.zip xls zipped 1 MBretrieved 27 May 2021

Taxonomy and systematics

The purple-throated woodstar is placed in genus ''Philodice'' by the

International Ornithological Committee The International Ornithologists' Union, formerly known as the International Ornithological Committee, is a group of about 200 international ornithologists, and is responsible for the International Ornithological Congress and other international ...

(IOC), the

Clements taxonomy ''The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World'' is a book by Jim Clements which presents a list of the bird species of the world. The most recent printed version is the sixth edition (2007), but has been updated yearly, the last version in 2022 ...

, and the South American Classification Committee of the

American Ornithological Society The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its m ...

(AOS). According to them, it shares the genus with the magenta-throated woodstar (''P. bryantae'').Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, J. A. Gerbracht, D. Lepage, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2021. The eBird/Clements checklist of Birds of the World: v2021. Downloaded from https://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/ Retrieved August 25, 2021Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 6 June 2022. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved June 6, 2022 However, the North American Classification Committee of AOS and

BirdLife International BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding ...

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. T ...

retain them in the older genus ''Calliphlox''. All the taxonomies agree that the purple-throated woodstar is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

Description

The purple-throated woodstar is long and weighs . Both sexes have a short, straight, black bill. Both have dusky bronze-green upperparts with a white patch on either side of the rump. The male has a small white spot behind the eye and the female a downward curved white line there. The male's

gorget A gorget , from the French ' meaning throat, was a band of linen wrapped around a woman's neck and head in the medieval period or the lower part of a simple chaperon hood. The term later described a steel or leather collar to protect the thro ...

is shining violet-purple with a white band below it. Its lower breast is dusky bronze and the belly and flanks rufous. The forked tail is brownish purple. The female has a buffy white throat with dusky speckles at the side, a white band below it, a green lower breast, and a rufous belly. Its central tail feathers are bronze-green and the others cinnamon with a black band near the end.Schuchmann, K.L. and P. F. D. Boesman (2020). Purple-throated Woodstar (''Philodice mitchellii''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.putwoo1.01 retrieved July 24, 2022

Distribution and habitat

The purple-throated woodstar is found discontinuously in eastern Panama's

Darién Province Darién (, , ) is a province in Panama whose capital city is La Palma. With an area of , it is located at the eastern end of the country and bordered to the north by the province of Panamá and the region of Kuna Yala. To the south, it is border ...

, along both slopes of Colombia's western Andes and south to central Ecuador, and in southern Ecuador. It inhabits the edges and interior of humid forest and

cloudforest A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud c ...

. In elevation in ranges from sea level to but is most numerous above .

Behavior

Movement

At least in Colombia, the purple-throated woodstar breeds at higher elevations and moves to lower ones outside that season.

Feeding

The purple-throated woodstar forages for nectar high in flowering trees such as those of genera

Cordia ''Cordia'' is a genus of flowering plants in the borage family, Boraginaceae. It contains about 300 species of shrubs and trees, that are found worldwide, mostly in warmer regions. Many of the species are commonly called manjack, while ''bocote' ...

and

Inga ''Inga'' is a genus of small tropical, tough-leaved, nitrogen-fixing treesElkan, Daniel. "Slash-and-burn farming has become a major threat to the world's rainforest" ''The Guardian'' 21 April 2004 and shrubs, subfamily Mimosoideae. ''Inga''s l ...

. Males defend feeding territories. In addition to feeding on nectar the species captures small

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

s by

hawking Hawking may refer to: People * Stephen Hawking (1942–2018), English theoretical physicist and cosmologist * Hawking (surname), a family name (including a list of other persons with the name) Film * ''Hawking'' (2004 film), about Stephen Ha ...

from a perch.

Breeding

The purple-throated woodstar breeds between December and May in southwestern Colombia; its breeding season elsewhere has not been determined. It builds a tiny cup nest of fine fibers and spiderweb on a thick branch of a tall tree, typically above the ground. The female incubates the clutch of two eggs for 15 to 17 days; the time to fledging is not known.

Vocalization

The purple-throated woodstar's song has not been described. Its calls include "a series of thin 'chit' notes" and "a squeaky 'kyee-kyee-kyee-kyee'."

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

has assessed the purple-throated woodstar as being of Least Concern. It has a restricted range, and though its population size is not known it is believed to be stable. It is considered uncommon to locally common and appears to depend on native trees for nectar. It occurs in at least two protected areas in Colombia.

References

External links

Purple-throated Woodstar photo gallery
VIREO
Photo
mindobirds.com {{Taxonbar, from=Q946800 purple-throated woodstar Birds of the Colombian Andes Birds of the Ecuadorian Andes Hummingbird species of South America purple-throated woodstar purple-throated woodstar Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN