mimic thrush
mimic thrush, common name for members of the Mimidae, a family of exclusively American birds, allied to the wrens and thrushes, that includes the mockingbird, the catbird, and the thrashers. Mimic thrushes are most numerous in Mexico. They are about the size of a robin or slightly larger but are proportionately slimmer and have slender, down-curved bills, long tails which they twitch vigorously when excited, and strong legs suited to scratching through dead leaves and underbrush for insects; they also eat berries and fruit. All these birds are famous for their vocal powers. The preeminent songster of all North American birds is the common mockingbird, Mimus polyglottos, found in the E United States S of Maryland-the northernmost of nine similar species. It is gray above, with white wing patches and whitish underparts. Its song, usually delivered from a high, exposed perch, includes phrases from other birds' songs (of which it will repeat as many as 30 in succession), imitations of familiar sounds, and a melodious song of its own. Unmated males sing more than mated males and only unmated males sing at night in the spring. Two species of blue mockingbirds, genus Melanotis, are found in Mexico. Another member of the family, the catbird, Dumatella carolinensis, slate gray with a black cap and a chestnut patch under the tail, is also an expert singer, with a plaintive mewing call that gives it its name. Of the 17 species of thrashers, the brown thrasher, Toxostoma rufum, of the E United States is typical. It is a rich chestnut above, with whitish underparts streaked with brown; it is sometimes erroneously called the brown thrush. Thrashers also are tuneful singers and are valuable destroyers of harmful insects. Mimic thrushes are classified in the phylum Chordata, subphylum Vertebrata, class Aves, order Passeriformes, family Mimidae.
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| Mimids | |
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| Gray Catbird Dumetella carolinensis |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Suborder: | Passeri |
| Infraorder: | Muscicapoidea |
| Family: | Mimidae Bonaparte, 1853 |
| Genera | |
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Allenia |
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The mimids are the New World family of passerine birds, Mimidae, that includes thrashers, mockingbirds, tremblers, and the New World catbirds. As their name (Latin for "mimic") suggests, these birds are notable for their vocalization, especially some species' remarkable ability to mimic a wide variety of birds and other sounds heard outdoors.
Description
There are over 30 species of mimids in two larger and some 10 small or monotypic genera. They tend towards dull grays and browns in their appearance, though a few are black or blue-gray, and many have red, yellow, or white irises. They range from 20 to 33 centimetres in length, and 36 to 56 grams in weight.[1] Many mimids have a rather thrush-like pattern: brown above, pale with dark streaks or spots below. They tend to have longer tails than thrushes (or the bigger wrens, which they also resemble) and longer bills that in many species curve downward (Clement & Perrins 2003).
They have long, strong legs (for passerines) with which many species hop through undergrowth searching for arthropods and fruits to eat. Their habitat varies from forest undergrowth to scrub, high-altitude grasslands, and deserts. The two tremblers live in the atypical habitat of rain forests in the Lesser Antilles, and the Brown Trembler has the particularly atypical behavior of foraging while clinging to tree trunks (Clement & Perrins 2003).
All known species build somewhat messy, bulky twig nests in dense growth, in most species on the ground or no more than 2 meters up. They usually lay 2 to 5 eggs that hatch in 12 or 13 days, which is also the length of time the chicks stay in the nest. Breeding usually starts in the spring or early in the rainy season, and many species can have two or even three broods per year. Most failures to fledge young are due to predation. Pairs often stay together for more than one breeding season (Clement & Perrins 2003).
In the history of science
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This section requires expansion. |
Contrary to often-held belief, the Nesomimus mockingbirds may have played at least as great a role as Darwin's finches in inspiring Darwin's work on his theory of evolution (Curry 2003).
Systematics
Outside the family
Phylogenetic analyses have shown that mimids are most closely related to starlings (Sibley & Monroe 1990, Zuccon et al. 2006). These and oxpeckers (and the Philippine creepers if they are not outright but highly apomorphic starlings) form a group of Muscicapoidea which originated probably in the Early Miocene - very roughly 25-20 mya[2] - somewhere in East Asia (Zuccon et al. 2006). This is evidenced by the Asian-SW Pacific distribution of the most basal starlings (and Philippine creepers) and the North American range of the basal mimids.
They are sometimes united with the starlings in the Sturnidae as a tribe Mimini as proposed by Sibley & Monroe (1990). This makes the expanded Stunidae a rather noninformative group and is probably due to the methodological drawbacks of their DNA-DNA hybridization technique.
Within the family
The mockingbirds with some thrashers seem to form one major clade, while the two other groups and the remaining thrashers seem to form the another, but the basal branching pattern is not well resolved. The tremblers, again, are a monophyletic lineage. The latter, however, are embedded in a paraphyletic catbird-Caribbean thrasher assemblage which consists of many rather basal lineages.(Hunt et al. 2001, Barber et al. 2004)
For detailed information on the evolutionary relationships of the different mimid lineages, see their articles.
- Genus Mimus - typical mockingbirds (some 10 species, includes Mimodes)
- The former genus Nesomimus, now part of Mimus[3] - mockingbirds of the Galápagos Islands (4 species)
- Genus Melanotis - blue mockingbirds (2 species)
- Genus Dumetella - Gray Catbird
- Genus Melanoptila - Black Catbird
- Genus Oreoscoptes - Sage Thrasher
- Genus Toxostoma - typical thrashers (11 species)
- Genus Ramphocinclus - White-breasted Thrasher
- Genus Allenia - Scaly-breasted Thrasher (formerly in Margarops)
- Genus Margarops - Pearly-eyed Thrasher
- Genus Cinclocerthia (2 species)
References
- Barber, Brian R.; Martínez-Gómez, Juan E. & Peterson, A. Townsend (2004): Systematic position of the Socorro mockingbird Mimodes graysoni. J. Avian Biol. 35: 195-198. doi:10.1111/j.0908-8857.2004.03233.x (HTML abstract)
- Clement; Peter; Perrins, Christopher (2003): Mockingbirds. In: Perrins, Christopher (ed.): The Firefly Encyclopedia of Birds: 534–535. Firefly Books. ISBN 1-55297-777-3
- Curry, Robert L. (2003): Darwin and the mockingbirds of Galápagos.
- Hunt, Jeffrey S.; Bermingham, Eldredge; & Ricklefs, Robert E. (2001): Molecular systematics and biogeography of Antillean thrashers, tremblers, and mockingbirds (Aves: Mimidae). Auk 118(1): 35–55. DOI:10.1642/0004-8038(2001)118[0035:MSABOA]2.0.CO;2 HTML fulltext without images
- Sibley, Charles Gald & Monroe, Burt L. Jr. (1990): Distribution and taxonomy of the birds of the world: A Study in Molecular Evolution. Yale University Press, New Haven, CT. ISBN 0-300-04969-2
- Zuccon, Dario; Cibois, Anne; Pasquet, Eric & Ericson, Per G.P. (2006): Nuclear and mitochondrial sequence data reveal the major lineages of starlings, mynas and related taxa. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 41(2): 333-344. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2006.05.007 (HTML abstract)
Footnotes
- ^ McClure, H. Elliott (1991). Forshaw, Joseph. ed. Encyclopaedia of Animals: Birds. London: Merehurst Press. pp. 183–184. ISBN 1-85391-186-0.
- ^ The seemingly precise dates of Zuccon et al. are not based on material evidence but on a crude estimate; a general Early Miocene age agrees with the phylogeny of other Passeri however.
- ^ American Ornithologists' Union, "Changes since 1 March 2005"
External links
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Wikispecies has information related to: Mimidae |
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Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Mimidae |
- Mimid videos on the Internet Bird Collection
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