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Oenanthe
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The wheatears are passerine birds of the genus Oenanthe. They were formerly considered to be members of the thrush family, Turdidae, but are now more commonly placed in the flycatcher family, Muscicapidae. This is an Old World group, but the northern wheatear has established a foothold in eastern Canada and Greenland and in western Canada and Alaska.
OverviewAI-generated
Oenanthe is a genus of birds classified within the family Muscicapidae, order Passeriformes, class Aves, and phylum Chordata. The taxon was described by Vieillot in 1816 and holds an accepted status in biological records. While the name Oenanthe also refers to a genus of plants in the family Apiaceae, this passage concerns the avian group.
Specimens of this genus have been recorded in South Africa, Mexico, India, Cyprus, and Turkey. These records are held by institutions including TCWC, MSC, IBUNAM, MSU, and CUMV. The available data includes 386 records and 282 media items associated with the genus.
Synthesized by Vinony from 19 facts across 5 sources: Wikidata, Plants of the World, WoRMS, iDigBio, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.
Species
Genus
- PhylumChordata
- ClassAves
- OrderPasseriformes
- FamilyMuscicapidae
via · Kew POWO
Museum specimens
- Specimen records
- 386
- With media
- 282
- Family
- Muscicapidae
- Collections
- TCWC, MSC, IBUNAM, MSU, CUMV, FMNH
- Recorded in
- South Africa, Mexico, India, Cyprus, Turkey, Indonesia, United Kingdom, Iran
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Encyclopedic overview
6 sectionsContents
- Taxonomy
- Description
- Species list
- Behaviour
- Fossil record
- References
The wheatears are passerine birds of the genus Oenanthe. They were formerly considered to be members of the thrush family, Turdidae, but are now more commonly placed in the flycatcher family, Muscicapidae. This is an Old World group, but the northern wheatear has established a foothold in eastern Canada and Greenland and in western Canada and Alaska.
==Taxonomy== The genus Oenanthe was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816 with Oenanthe leucura, the black wheatear, as the type species. The genus formerly included fewer species but molecular phylogenetic studies of birds in the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae found that the genus Cercomela was polyphyletic with five species, including the type species C. melanura, phylogenetically nested within the genus Oenanthe. This implied that Cercomela and Oenanthe were synonyms. The genus Oenanthe (Vieillot, 1816) has taxonomic priority over Cercomela (Bonaparte, 1856) making Cercomela a junior synonym. The genus name Oenanthe was used by Aristotle for an unidentified bird. The word is derived from the Greek oenoē meaning "vine" and anthos meaning "bloom". The bird was associated with the grape harvest season.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Oenanthe” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.