Phaenicophilidae Hispaniolan Tanagers
Version: 1.0 — Published March 4, 2020
Introduction
This group of tanagers, including two genera once thought to be warblers, is limited to the single island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean. All are a variation on an olive-backed, fairly long-tailed songbird with gray or white below and some kind of white accent in a gray or black face. Their calls are seldom really melodic; sometimes throaty and jay-like, other times sibilant and strident like an irritated cardinal, they are almost always simple in structure. Only future work will help us understand better whether this family, one of several endemic to Hispaniola, represents a stalled dead end, or a focus of future diversifications to come.
Habitat
The Hispaniolan tanagers live in a wide variety of habitats, including arid scrub, highland pine forest, and broadleaf evergreen forest.
Diet and Foraging
The diet and foraging behaviors of the Hispaniolan tanagers are not well studied. The two Phaenicophilus palm-tanagers primarily glean insects from leaves and eat lesser amounts of fruit. The diets of the Microligea and Xenoligea warblers are less well known, although these birds are known to feed on seeds, fruit, and insects.
Breeding
Very little is known about the breeding biology of the Hispaniolan tanagers. It is presumed that they are monogamous with biparental care. They construct simple cup nests out of twigs, leaves, moss, stems, and other plant matter. Nests are typically placed in a shrub or tree. Females typically lay 2 to 4 eggs. No data are available on the parental care of the Hispaniolan tanagers, although it is likely that both male and female are active in feeding young. One record from Phaenicophilus indicates incubation and nestling periods of about ten days each.
Conservation Status
Habitat loss is the primary threat facing phaenicophilids, two species of which (50%) are of conservation concern (1 NT, 1 VU). The vulnerable White-winged Warbler Xenoligea montana has a severely fragmented range and rapidly declining population owing to the clearing of highland forest for agriculture and logging and possibly to predation by introduced mammals. Similarly, widespread deforestation is thought to be responsible for the decline of the Gray-crowned Palm-tanager Phaenicophilus poliocephalus.
Systematics History
The Hispaniolan tanagers are part of the large New World radiation of nine-primaried oscines within the superfamily Passeroidea. The taxonomic affinities of these birds have long been unclear, and the species now grouped into Phaenicophilidae were not always considered to be closely related, with Microlegia and Xenolegia traditionally placed in Parulidae (Lovette & Bermingham 2002, Lovette et al. 2010) and Phaenicophilus placed in Thraupidae (Burns 1997). Molecular phylogenetic studies indicate, however, that this small radiation of Hispaniolan endemic passerines forms a clade that is probably most closely related to two other lineages of Caribbean endemics, Nesospingidae and Spindalidae (Barker et al. 2013).
Conservation Status
Least Concern |
50%
|
---|---|
Near Threatened |
25%
|
Vulnerable |
25%
|
Endangered |
0%
|
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