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Petroicidae
Petroica phoenicea.
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Suborder: Passeri
Family: Petroicidae
Global range (In red)
Global range (In red)
Genera

The bird family Petroicidae includes roughly 45 species in about 15 genera. All are endemic to Australasia or nearby areas. For want of a more accurate common name, the family is often described as the Australasian robins: it extends beyond Australasia, however, and includes not just robins but the Jacky Winter, the New Zealand Tomtit, some flycatchers, and scrub-robins.

Contents

Characteristics

Most species have a stocky build with a large, rounded head, a short, straight bill, and rounded wingtips. They occupy a wide range of wooded habitats, from subalpine to tropical rainforest, and mangrove swamps to semi-arid scrubland. All are primarily insectivorous, although a few supplement their diet with seeds. Hunting is mostly by perch and pounce, a favoured tactic being to cling sideways onto a treetrunk and scan the ground below without moving.

Social organisation is usually centered on long term pair-bonds and small family groups. Some genera practice cooperative breeding, with all family members helping defend a territory and feed nestlings.

Nests are cup-shaped, usually constructed by the female, and often placed in a vertical fork of a tree or shrub; many species are expert at adding moss, bark or lichen to the outside of the nest as camouflague, making it very difficult to spot (even when it is in a seemingly prominent location).

Systematics

Although named after true robins, the Petroicidae robins, along with many other insect-eating birds, were classified as flycatchers in a huge family Muscicapidae,1 before being placed in their own family or with the whistler family Pachycephalidae.2

The relationship of the Petroicidae to other bird families is uncertain; Sibley and Alquist's DNA-DNA hybridisation studies had placed them in the Corvoidea (a huge group that includes the shrikes, crows and jays, butcherbirds, woodswallows, drongos, cuckoo-shrike, fantails, monarch flycatchers and many others).

In a more recent study, they seem to form a distinct lineage of uncertain relationships; all that can be said at present with reasonable certainty is that they are neither Passerida ("advanced" songbirds) nor a very ancient songbird group.3

Ackowledging their position is unclear, current consensus places them as basal Passerida.4

Classification

A comprehensive review, including an analysis of the osteological characters, by Schodde and Mason in 1999 illustrated three groupings, classified as subfamilies below:5

FAMILY: PETROICIDAE

References

  1. ^ Boles, p. xv
  2. ^ Boles, p. 35
  3. ^ Barker, F. Keith; Cibois, Alice; Schikler, Peter A.; Feinstein, Julie & Cracraft, Joel (2004). "PDF fulltext Phylogeny and diversification of the largest avian radiation." (pdf). PNAS 101 (30): 11040-45. doi:10.1073/pnas.0401892101, http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0401892101v1.pdf PDF fulltext. Retrieved on 14 August 2008. 
  4. ^ Christidis L, Boles WE (2008). Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds. Canberra: CSIRO Publishing. pp. p. 175. ISBN 9780643065116. 
  5. ^ Schodde R, Mason IJ (1999). The Directory of Australian Birds : Passerines. A Taxonomic and Zoogeographic Atlas of the Biodiversity of Birds in Australia and its Territories.. Collingwood, Australia: CSIRO Publishing. ISBN 0-643-06457-7. 
  • Del Hoyo, J.; Elliot, A. & Christie D. (editors). (2007). Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 12: Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees. Lynx Edicions. ISBN 9788496553422
  • Mathews, G. M. (1920): The Birds of Australia Vol. VIII, No. 4.
  • Miller, Hilary C. & Lambert, David M. (2006): A molecular phylogeny of New Zealand’s Petroica (Aves: Petroicidae) species based on mitochondrial DNA sequences. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40(3): 844-855. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2006.04.012 (HTML abstract)

Cited text

  • Boles, Walter E. (1988). The Robins and Flycatchers of Australia. Sydney: Angus & Robertson. ISBN 0-207-15400-7. 

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