African Stonechat

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iAfrican Stonechat

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Muscicapidae
Genus:	Saxicola
Species:	S. torquata

Binomial name

Saxicola torquata
(Linnaeus, 1766)

Synonyms

Saxicola axillaris

The African Stonechat (Saxicola torquata^[1]) is a member of the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae. In the past it was usually included in the "Common Stonechat" (Saxicola torquata sensu lato), but all available evidence strongly supports full species status for the European and the Siberian Stonechats, as well as the Fuerteventura Chat and Réunion Stonechat (Wink et al. 2002).

It has a scattered distribution across much of southern Africa, and more locally in central and sub-Saharan northern Africa north to Senegal and Ethiopia, with outlying populations in the mountains of southwest Arabia, and on Madagascar and Grand Comoro Island. It is non-migratory, moving only locally if at all; as a result, it has developed much regional variation, being divided into 12 subspecies.

Note that the recent separation as species was proposed after mtDNA cytochrome b sequence and nDNA microsatellite fingerprinting analysis of specimens of the subspecies Saxicola torquata axillaris but not S. t. torquata (Wink et al. 2002), and hence this species was briefly known as S. axillaris.

The closest living relative of this species is the Réunion Stonechat. These two form an sub-Saharan African lineage that diverged from the Eurasian one in the Late Pliocene, roughly 2.5 mya; Réunion was colonized immediately thereafter (Wink et al. 2002).

[edit] References

Wink, M.; Sauer-Gürth, H. & Gwinner, E. (2002): Evolutionary relationships of stonechats and related species inferred from mitochondrial-DNA sequences and genomic fingerprinting. British Birds 95: 349-355. PDF fulltext