The red-winged prinia or the red-winged warbler (Prinia erythroptera) is a bird species in the family Cisticolidae. It formerly belonged in the monotypic genus Heliolais.[2] It is found in Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, where its natural habitat is dry savanna.[1]
| Red-winged prinia | |
|---|---|
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| Eating grasshopper, in Gambia | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Passeriformes |
| Family: | Cisticolidae |
| Genus: | Prinia |
| Species: | P. erythroptera |
| Binomial name | |
| Prinia erythroptera (Jardine, 1849) | |
Taxonomy
The red-winged prinia was described by the Scottish naturalist William Jardine in 1849 under the binomial name Drymoica erythroptera. The type locality is West Africa.[3][4] The specific epithet erythroptera comes from the Ancient Greek eruthros for "red" and -pteros, "-winged".[5]
There are four subspecies:[2]
- P. e. erythroptera (Jardine, 1849) – Senegal to northern Cameroon
- P. e. jodoptera (Heuglin, 1864) – central Cameroon to southern Sudan and northwestern Uganda
- P. e. major (Blundell & Lovat, 1899) – Ethiopia
- P. e. rhodoptera (Shelley, 1880) – Kenya to eastern Zimbabwe and Mozambique
Most taxonomists place this species in the genus Prinia rather than in its own monotypic genus Heliolais.[6][7] Support for this alternative placement is provided by a molecular phylogenetic study of the Cisticolidae published in 2013 that found that the red-winged warbler was closely related to the prinias.[8]
References
External links
- Red-winged warbler - Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds.