The Old World flycatchers are a large family, the Muscicapidae, of small passerinebirds restricted to the Old World (Europe, Africa and Asia), with the exception of several vagrants and two species, bluethroat (Luscinia svecica) and northern wheatear (Oenanthe oenanthe), found also in North America. These are mainly small arboreal insectivores, many of which, as the name implies, take their prey on the wing. The family is relatively large and includes 351 species which are divided into 54 genera.
Taxonomy
The name Muscicapa for the family was introduced by the Scottish naturalist John Fleming in 1822.[1][2] The word had earlier been used for the genus Muscicapa by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760.[3] Muscicapa comes from the Latin musca meaning a fly and capere to catch.[4][5]
In 1910 the German ornithologist Ernst Hartert found it impossible to define boundaries between the three families Muscicapidae, Sylviidae (Old World warblers) and Turdidae (thrushes). He therefore treated them as subfamilies of an extended flycatcher family that also included Timaliidae (Old World babblers) and Monarchidae (Monarch flycatchers).[6][7] Forty years later a similar arrangement was adopted by the American ornithologists Ernst Mayr and Dean Amadon in an article published in 1951. Their large family Muscicapidae which they termed the "primitive insect eaters" contained 1460 species divided into eight subfamilies.[8] The use of the extended group was endorsed by a committee set up following the Eleventh International Ornithological Congress held in Basel in 1954.[9] Subsequent DNA–DNA hybridization studies by Charles Sibley and others showed that the subfamilies were not closely related to one another. As a result, the large group was broken up into a number of separate families,[10] although for a while most authorities continued to retain the thrushes in Muscicapidae.[11][12] In 1998 the American Ornithologists' Union chose to treat the thrushes as a separate family in the seventh edition of their Check-list of North American birds and subsequently most authors have followed their example.[13][14]
Two large molecular phylogenetic studies of species within Muscicapidae published in 2010 showed that the genera Fraseria, Melaenornis and Muscicapa were non-monophyletic. The authors were unable to propose revised genera as not all the species were sampled and not all the nodes in their phylogenies were strongly supported.[17][19] A subsequent study published in 2016, that included 37 of the 42 Muscicapini species, confirmed that the genera were non-monophyletic and proposed a reorganised arrangement of the species with several new or resurrected genera.[20]
Madagascar magpie-robin Copsychus albospecularis picaSilverbird, monotypic genus EmpidornisTickell's blue flycatcher, genus CyornisAmber mountain rock thrush Monticola sharpei erythronotusEuropean stonechat Saxicola torquatusCyprus wheatear Oenanthe cypriaca
The cladogram below is based on a molecular phylogenetic study of the family by Min Zhao and collaborators that was published in 2023. Some regions of the phylogenetic tree were not strongly supported by the sequence data.[25] Both the genera included and the number of species in each genera are taken from the list of birds maintained by Frank Gill, Pamela Rasmussen and David Donsker on behalf of the International Ornithological Committee (IOC).[13]
The appearance of these birds is very varied, but they mostly have weak songs and harsh calls. They are small to medium birds, ranging from 9 to 22 cm in length.[26] Many species are dull brown in colour, but the plumage of some can be much brighter, especially in the males.[27] Most have broad, flattened bills suited to catching insects in flight, although the few ground-foraging species typically have finer bills.[28]
Old World flycatchers live in almost every environment with a suitable supply of trees, from dense forest to open scrub, and even the montane woodland of the Himalayas. The more northerly species migrate south in winter, ensuring a continuous diet of insects.[28]
Depending on the species, their nests are either well-constructed cups placed in a tree or cliff ledge, or simply lining in a pre-existing tree hole. The hole-nesting species tend to lay larger clutches, with an average of eight eggs, rather than just two to five.[28]
Notes
^The ornithologist Dario Zuccon pointed out that when George Sangster and colleagues erected the name "Niltavinae" for the subfamily, they did not provide a description as required by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. Sangster and colleagues subsequently published a description in 2016.[21][22]
^Dario Zuccon has argued that the correct name for the African forest robins assemblage is Cossyphinae (type genus CossyphaVigors, 1825) as the name predates Erithacinae (G.R. Gray, 1846).[22][24]
^Bock, Walter J. (1994). History and nomenclature of avian family-group names. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History Issue 222. p. 116. hdl:2246/830.
^Brisson, Mathurin Jacques (1760). Ornithologie; ou, Méthode contenant la division des oiseaux en ordres, sections, genres, espéces & leurs variétés. &c (in Latin and French). Paris: Jean-Baptiste Bauche. Vol. 1 p. 32, Vol. 2 p. 357.
^Mayr, E.; Amadon, D. (1951). A Classification of Recent Birds. American Museum Novitates, Number 1496. New York: American Museum of Natural History. pp. 17–19, 36–37. hdl:2246/3994.
^Sibley, C.G.; Monroe, B.L. (1993). A Supplement to Distribution and Taxonomy of Birds of the World. New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press. ISBN978-0-300-05549-8.
^Clement, P.; Hathway, R. (2000). Helm Identification Guides: Thrushes. London: Christopher Helm. p. 28. ISBN978-07136-3940-7.
^Dickinson, E.C., ed. (2003). The Howard and Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World (3rd ed.). London: Christopher Helm. ISBN978-0-7136-6536-9.
^ abVoelker, G.; Spellman, G.M. (2004). "Nuclear and mitochondrial DNA evidence of polyphyly in the avian superfamily Muscicapoidea". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 30 (2): 386–394. doi:10.1016/S1055-7903(03)00191-X. PMID14715230.
^ abcdSangster, G.; Alström, P.; Forsmark, E.; Olsson, U. (2010). "Multi-locus phylogenetic analysis of Old World chats and flycatchers reveals extensive paraphyly at family, subfamily and genus level (Aves: Muscicapidae)". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 57 (1): 380–392. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2010.07.008. PMID20656044.
^Dickinson, E.C.; Christidis, L., eds. (2014). The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World. Volume 2, Passerines (4th ed.). Eastbourne, U.K.: Aves Press. pp. 584, 598, 601, 607. ISBN978-0-9568611-2-2.
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