Red-billed starling

Red-billed starling
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1) [1]
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Sturnidae
Genus:	Spodiopsar
Species:	S. sericeus
Binomial name
Spodiopsar sericeus (Gmelin, JF, 1789)
Synonyms
Sturnus sericeus

The red-billed starling (Spodiopsar sericeus) is a species of starling in the family Sturnidae. It is found in south and southeastern China.

Taxonomy

The red-billed starling was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae . He placed it with the starlings in the genus Sturnus and coined the binomial name Sturnus sericeus. ^{[2] [3]} The specific epithet sericeus is Medieval Latin meaning "silken". ^[4] Gmelin based his account on the "silk starling" from China that had been described and illustrated in 1776 by the English naturalist Peter Brown from a specimen owned by the collector Marmaduke Tunstall. ^[5]

The red-billed starling was formerly placed in the genus Sturnus . A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2008 found that the genus was polyphyletic. ^[6] In the reoganization to create monotypic genera, the red-billed starling and the white-cheeked starling were moved to the resurrected genus Spodiopsar that had been introduced in 1889 by Richard Bowdler Sharpe. The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised. ^[7]

White-cheeked starling and red-billed starling hybrid in Japan.

References

1. BirdLife International (2018). "Spodiopsar sericeus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species . 2018: e.T22710867A132091096. doi: 10.2305/IUCN.UK.2018-2.RLTS.T22710867A132091096.en . Retrieved 12 November 2021.
2. Gmelin, Johann Friedrich (1789). Systema naturae per regna tria naturae : secundum classes, ordines, genera, species, cum characteribus, differentiis, synonymis, locis (in Latin). Vol. 1, Part 2 (13th ed.). Lipsiae [Leipzig]: Georg. Emanuel. Beer. p. 805.
3. Mayr, Ernst; Greenway, James C. Jr, eds. (1962). Check-list of Birds of the World. Vol. 15. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Museum of Comparative Zoology. p. 106.
4. Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 354. ISBN   978-1-4081-2501-4.
5. Brown, Peter (1776). Nouvelles illustrations de zoologie : contenant cinquante planches enlumineés d'oiseaux curieux, et qui non etés jamais descrits, et quelques de quadrupedes, de reptiles et d'insectes, avec de courtes descriptions systematiques (in French and English). London: B. White. p. 48, Plate 21.
6. Zuccon, D.; Pasquet, E.; Ericson, P.G.P. (2008). "Phylogenetic relationships among Palearctic–Oriental starlings and mynas (genera Sturnus and Acridotheres: Sturnidae)". Zoologica Scripta. 37 (5): 469–481. doi:10.1111/j.1463-6409.2008.00339.x.
7. Gill, Frank; Donsker, David; Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (July 2023). "Nuthatches, Wallcreeper, treecreepers, mockingbirds, starlings, oxpeckers". IOC World Bird List Version 13.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 14 August 2023.
8. Sato, S.; Kimura, H.; Hirata, S.; Yoshiaki, O. (2010). "A record of interspecific hybridization of the grey starling Sturnus cineraceus and the red-billed starling Sturnus sericeus in Sukumo, Kochi Prefecture" . Japanese Journal of Ornithology. 59: 76–79. doi: 10.3838/jjo.59.76 .