Congo ant picker
| Congo ant picker | ||||||||||||
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Congo ant picker female ( Parmoptila jamesoni ) |
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Parmoptila jamesoni | ||||||||||||
| ( Shelley , 1890) |
The Congo ant picker or Jameson ant picker ( Parmoptila jamesoni ) is a species from the finch family . It is native to the Democratic Republic of the Congo and some of its neighboring states.
description
The Congo ant picker reaches a body length of eleven centimeters and weighs 9.5 grams.
The males of the Congo ant picker have a red spot on the forehead , similar to the red- forehead ant picker . This led to them being put in the same way with the red-forehead ant picker until 2003. However, the males of the Congo ant picker lack the bright spots on the head and neck that characterize the males of the red-forehead ant picker. In addition, the base color on the sides of the head is reddish like their chest and underside of the body.
It was not until the end of the 20th century that the females of the Congo ant picker were also described as having a light underside of the body covered with dark stripes. This distinguishes them from the females of the other two species of ant-pickers , the red-forehead ant-picker and the Woodhouse-ant-picker , whose underside appears speckled because the feathers are interrupted by a light spot at their dark border.
distribution
The Congo ant picker has its main distribution area in the north of the Democratic Republic of the Congo , the former Zaire . Eastern extensions of the occurrence reach the Central African Rift in western Uganda and the nature reserve Minziro Forest Reserve in the extreme northwest of Tanzania .
In the west, the range of the Congo ant picker connects to that of the Woodhouse ant picker. Sympatric occurrences are not known, however, these could only be found in the border area of the distribution zones in the Central African Republic and in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Habitat and way of life
The Congo ant picker mainly inhabits lowland forests, dense and older secondary forests, swamp forests, and gallery forests near bodies of water. He is primarily in the understory.
Congo ant pickers occur individually, in pairs or in small family groups. They are very shy and inconspicuous birds that are often overlooked in the thicket. The nests are piles of grass and leaves about eight inches wide that are built in the branches of the trees. The inside of the nest is lined with plant fibers. The clutch consists of three to four white-shelled eggs.
The main food of the Congo ant pickers, like the other ant picker species, is tree ants and other small insects. The branches, leaves and bark of the trees are systematically searched for insects by the ant pickers.
Research history and taxonomy
The Congo ant picker ( Parmoptila jamesoni ), the type specimen of which comes from the former Belgian Congo , was classified in the genus Pholidornis when Shelley first described it in 1890 , like the red- forehead ant picker . The specific epithet was chosen after the British African explorer James Sligo Jameson (1856-1888), who had joined Stanley's expedition to colonize the Congo. Jameson was stationed in Jambuja on the Aruwimi , a tributary of the Congo , where he kept a small collection of birds and insects. Part of the collection, which also contained a male Congo ant picker, went to the Natural History Museum in London , where Shelley took over the inspection of the birds. He immediately noticed the similarity of the bird from Jambuja with the red-forehead ant-picker, which had been described by Sharpe and Ussher in 1872 , and he compared the new species with its type specimen. The absence of the light gray spots on the neck of the male and the reddish color of the neck on either side of the head made him consider the bird from the Congo as a separate species.
In the second half of the 20th century, however, the Congo ant picker was almost exclusively placed in a single species by the authors of the books on the bird world of Africa together with the red-forehead ant picker, which was often referred to by the scientific name as Parmoptila jamesoni , although the older one Name Parmoptila rubrifrons would have had priority. The confusion about the naming only diminished in 2003, when the ornithologist and illustrator Martin Woodcock re-examined various museum specimens morphologically and scientifically evaluated the differences in the plumage of the three species of ant pickers.
Danger
Since the Congo ant picker has been regarded as a separate species in its range, the IUCN has been able to classify its status as "not endangered" ( least concern ). As long as the Congo ant picker was still undifferentiated and placed in the same species as the West African red-forehead ant picker, the risk potential that emanates from the deforestation in the habitat of the red-forehead ant picker was also transferred to the Congo ant picker.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Parmoptila jamesoni Congo ant picker in the Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive, accessed on October 30, 2014
- ^ A b c Martin W. Woodcock: Systematics and confusion in the genus Parmoptila. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, 123, 4, pp. 274-277, 2003
- ↑ BirdLife factsheet on the Congo ant picker , accessed on October 30, 2014
- ↑ Parmoptila jamesoni Congo ant picker in the Internet Bird Collection, accessed October 30, 2014
- ^ C. Hilary Fry and Stuart Keith (eds.): The Birds of Africa - Volume VII. , Christopher Helm, London 2004, pp. 262-263 ISBN 0-7136-6531-9
- ↑ Jürgen Nicolai (ed.), Joachim Steinbacher (ed.), Renate van den Elzen, Gerhard Hofmann, Claudia Mettke-Hofmann: Prachtfinken - Afrika , series Handbuch der Vogelpflege, Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2007, pp. 29–30 ISBN 978-3-8001-4964-3
- ^ George Ernest Shelley : On a collection of birds made by the late Mr. JS Jameson on the Aruwhimi River, Upper Congo. Ibis (6th series), 2, pp. 156–170, 1890, p. 163 (first description)
- ↑ Parmoptila jamesoni in the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2014.2. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 30, 2014.
literature
- C. Hilary Fry and Stuart Keith (Eds.): The Birds of Africa. Volume VII. Christopher Helm, London 2004, p. 262 ISBN 0-7136-6531-9 .
- Jürgen Nicolai (Hrsg.), Joachim Steinbacher (Hrsg.), Renate van den Elzen, Gerhard Hofmann, Claudia Mettke-Hofmann: Prachtfinken - Afrika , Series Handbuch der Vogelpflege, Eugen Ulmer Verlag, Stuttgart 2007 ISBN 978-3-8001-4964 -3
- Martin W. Woodcock: Systematics and confusion in the genus Parmoptila. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club, 123, 4, pp. 274-277, 2003
- George Ernest Shelley : On a collection of birds made by the late Mr. JS Jameson on the Aruwhimi River, Upper Congo. Ibis, 2 (6th series), pp. 156–170, 1890, p. 163 (first description)
Web links
- Parmoptila jamesoni inthe IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2014.2. Listed by: BirdLife International, 2012. Retrieved October 30, 2014.