Bush-warblers (or bush warblers) are small
insectivorous
A robber fly eating a hoverfly
An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects.
The first vertebrate insectivores were ...
songbird
A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds ( Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 50 ...
s of the
genera
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 ...
''
Cettia
''Cettia'' is a genus of small insectivorous songbirds ("warblers") which make up the core of the newly recognized family Cettiidae. They were formerly placed in the Sylviidae, which at that time was a wastebin taxon for the warbler-like Sylvioid ...
'', ''
Horornis'', and ''
Bradypterus''. They were formerly placed in the "
wastebin"
Old World warbler
Old World warblers are a large group of birds formerly grouped together in the bird family Sylviidae. The family held over 400 species in over 70 genera, and were the source of much taxonomic confusion. Two families were split out initially, the ci ...
family
Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...
. None of the genera as traditionally delimited are believed to be
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 ...
.
[Alström ''et al.'' (2006)]
Due to their external similarity
convergently acquired by strong
selective pressures due to the identical habitat, they were occasionally believed to be close relatives. However, they belong to two well-distant families in the
Sylvioidea
Sylvioidea is a superfamily of passerine birds, one of at least three major clades within the Passerida along with the Muscicapoidea and Passeroidea. It contains about 1300 species including the Old World warblers, Old World babblers, swallows, ...
, the "
warbler
Various Passeriformes (perching birds) are commonly referred to as warblers. They are not necessarily closely related to one another, but share some characteristics, such as being fairly small, vocal, and insectivorous.
Sylvioid warblers
Th ...
-and-
babbler
Babbler may refer to:
* Old World babbler, a large family of mostly Old World passerine birds
* Australo-Papuan babbler, passerine birds endemic to Australia-New Guinea
* Babbler (software), a French software company
* Babbler (''Dungeons & Drag ...
"
superfamily
SUPERFAMILY is a database and search platform of structural and functional annotation for all proteins and genomes. It classifies amino acid sequences into known structural domains, especially into SCOP superfamilies. Domains are functional, str ...
:
* ''
Cettia
''Cettia'' is a genus of small insectivorous songbirds ("warblers") which make up the core of the newly recognized family Cettiidae. They were formerly placed in the Sylviidae, which at that time was a wastebin taxon for the warbler-like Sylvioid ...
'', the cettiid bush-warblers or typical bush-warblers, belong in the
Cettiidae
Cettiidae is a newly validated family of small insectivorous songbirds ("warblers"), formerly placed in the Old World warbler " wastebin" assemblage. It contains the typical bush warblers ('' Cettia'') and their relatives. As a common name, ce ...
, an ancient sylvioid lineage related to
long-tailed tits.
* ''
Horornis'', the horornid bush-warblers, also belonging in the
Cettiidae
Cettiidae is a newly validated family of small insectivorous songbirds ("warblers"), formerly placed in the Old World warbler " wastebin" assemblage. It contains the typical bush warblers ('' Cettia'') and their relatives. As a common name, ce ...
, an ancient sylvioid lineage related to
long-tailed tits.
* ''
Bradypterus'', the megalurid bush-warblers, belong to in the
Megaluridae, the grass-warbler family which is closely related to the
Malagasy warbler
The Tetrakas and allies are a newly validated family of songbirds. They were formally named Bernieridae in 2010. The family currently consists of eleven species (in eight genera) of small forest birds. These birds are all endemic to Madagascar. ...
s and the peculiar
black-capped donacobius from
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the souther ...
, formerly believed to be an aberrant
wren
Wrens are a family of brown passerine birds in the predominantly New World family Troglodytidae. The family includes 88 species divided into 19 genera. Only the Eurasian wren occurs in the Old World, where, in Anglophone regions, it is commonl ...
.
Footnotes
References
* Alström, P.; Ericson, P.G.P.; Olsson, U. & Sundberg, P. (2006): Phylogeny and classification of the avian superfamily Sylvioidea. ''
Mol. Phylogenet. Evol.'' 38(2): 381–397.
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