Elachuridae: Ornithologists Describe New Family of Passerine Birds

Jun 16, 2014 by Sergio Prostak

A group of ornithologists led by Dr Trevor Price of the University of Chicago has described a new family of birds that is represented by just one species, the Spotted wren-babbler.

The Spotted wren-babbler (Elachura formosa),
a painting by John Gerrard Keulemans, 1892.

The Spotted wren-babbler is a small perching bird found in China, India, Nepal, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

This bird measures about 10 cm in length and has a short tail. It is brown above, white below, with rufous wings. It also has white speckles all over its body.

Previously, the spotted wren-babbler was included in the genus Spelaeornis as Spelaeornis formosus along with eight other species of wren-babblers.

But a new study of bird DNA has uncovered a big surprise.

Read more at:

How a Tiny Bird Got Its Own Branch on the Tree of Life

A tiny brown bird with a big voice is making news in the animal kingdom.

The spotted wren-babbler found in China, the Indian Himalayas and northern Vietnam was recently proven to be part of a separate family of wren-babblers, genetically distinct and unrelated to other birds of the same type.

“It’s such a distinctive little thing,” says Per Alstrom, the Swedish visiting professor at Beijing’s Chinese Academy of Sciences who made the discovery. “It sits on its own branch on the big tree of life” for the perching songbirds that make up much of the bird kingdom.

This wren-babbler, named Elachura formosa, is a “very important discovery,” says Terry Townshend, a Beijing bird watching expert and author of the Birding Beijing blog. Mr. Alstrom is “doing a lot for Chinese science.”

So why hasn’t anyone made the discovery before now?

The bird looks almost exactly like other species of wren-babblers, says Mr. Alstrom, with pale brown coloring and small white spots, so no one thought to test its DNA. “This guy has probably had lots of relatives, but they’ve gone extinct.”

Continued

New bird family discovered in Asia

By Ella Davies

Reporter, BBC Nature

A unique family of birds containing just one species has been discovered by researchers.

Scientists investigating families within the Passerida group of perching birds identified 10 separate branches in their tree of life.

The analysis also revealed that the spotted wren-babbler sat on its own branch and was not related to either wrens or wren-babblers.

Experts recommend the distinctive bird should now be referred to as Elachura.

The discovery is published in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters.

"This single species is the only living representative of one of the earliest off-shoots within the largest group of [perching birds], which comprises [around] 36% of the world's 10,500 bird species," said Prof Per Alstrom from the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, Uppsala, who undertook the study alongside researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing.

Continued