Hyliotidae Hyliotas
Version: 1.0 — Published March 4, 2020
Introduction
These small passerines move through the canopy of African trees as they forage, gleaning their prey energetically with constantly moving head and eyes, but jumping and bounding between branches more than the warblers that they often forage alongside. All are glossy shades of blue-black above with light-colored bellies. Their tails look a little small relative to their horizontally-held bodies, distinguishing them from the heavier framed and more upright-postured shrikes and batises whose coloration and habitats they share.
Habitat
Hyliotas are found in acacia woodland, savanna, and some more-open human-altered habitats, including coffee plantations.
Diet and Foraging
Hyliotas feed on insects, including insect eggs. They forage actively alone, in pairs, or in small groups, often in mixed-species flocks, in low shrubs but perhaps most often high in treetops, and especially in flowering or fruiting trees. They prefer smaller branches and hop along them, gleaning from bark and foliage; they often hang upside-down to search beneath leaves and branches, and they also take prey in flight.
Breeding
Very little information is available on the breeding biology of the hyliotas, although they appear to be monogamous with biparental care. Nests consist of simple, round cups of plant stems, rootlets, moss, lichens, and other material, often placed high in a tree in the fork of a branch. Females typically lay 2 to 4 eggs. No information is available on chick growth or incubation and nestling periods.
Conservation Status
Although most hyliotas face no immediate conservation concerns, one restricted-range species (25%) is of concern (1 EN). The endangered Usambara Hyliota Hyliota usambara is found in very small fragments of foothill forest in northeastern Tanzania where it is threatened by habitat destruction.
Systematics History
Hyliotas are oscine passerines, here recognized as part of the superfamily Sylvioidea. Few recent phylogenetic studies have included the hyliotas, but the available evidence suggests that they do not belong with the traditional Sylviidae sensu lato, where they had usually been placed. Though the exact placement of Hyliotidae is still not quite settled, all recent studies indicate that it is an old lineage that split off near the base of the radiation of Sylvioidea. The analyses of Fuchs et al. (2006b, 2009) indicate it is a distinct lineage in a polytomy with all the other major clades of the Passerida, and Johansson et al. (2008b) found it to be in a polytomy with all the Passerida except the passeroids. Alström et al. (2014) found Hyliotidae in a polytomy with Stenostiridae and a clade made up of Paridae and Remizidae, with these four taxa taken together sister to the rest of the sylvioids, and Barker (2014) found it sister to Paridae, and together these were sister to all the other sylvioids. In choosing related families here, we have been influenced by these latest studies finding closer sister relationships with a few families, but it should remain clear that this is an old group with distant affinities to a great number of passerine groups.
Conservation Status
Least Concern |
75%
|
---|---|
Near Threatened |
0%
|
Vulnerable |
0%
|
Endangered |
25%
|
Critically Endangered |
0%
|
Extinct in the Wild |
0%
|
Extinct |
0%
|
Not Evaluated |
0%
|
Data Deficient |
0%
|
Unknown |
0%
|
Data provided by IUCN (2023) Red List. More information