27/01/2015
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Another Amazonian cryptic species split

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This male Blackish Antbird from its core range in the central Amazonian region remains as it was, but has now lost a western subspecies to a split. Photo: Hector Bottai (commons.wikimedia.org).
This male Blackish Antbird from its core range in the central Amazonian region remains as it was, but has now lost a western subspecies to a split. Photo: Hector Bottai (commons.wikimedia.org).


Blackish Antbird Cercomacra nigrescens is a widespread lowland South American bird from the family Thamnophilidae. The 200 species of this insectivorous family seem to conceal many cryptic species. 

C n fuscicauda, found in the borderlands of Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil and Bolivia, has been found to produce a very distinctive song and is apparently reproductively isolated where it meets the ranges of other subspecies. Thus, it has been deemed a new species, now named Riparian Antbird.

For more information on this, see: Mayer, S, Coopmans, P, Krabbe, N, and Isler, M L.  2014.  Vocal evidence for species rank to Cercomacra nigrescens fuscicauda J. T. Zimmer. Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club 134: 145-154.