Drymophila


Drymophila is a genus of passerine birds in the antbird family Thamnophilidae that are found in South America.

Taxonomy

The genus Drymophila was introduced by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1824. The Drymophila antbird is a species of bird in the Thamnophilidae family, known for thriving in a bamboo-rich environment such as South America by utilizing aspects of the bamboo to allow for a food source, shelter, and protection from predators The type species is the ferruginous antbird. The name of the genus combines the Ancient Greek words for "wood" or "copse" and "fond of".
A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2020 found that the genus Drymophila was not monophyletic. The scaled antbird was sister to a clade containing the remaining species in the genus Drymophila and the warbling-antbirds in the genus Hypocnemis.

Species

The genus Drymophila contains the following eleven species:
ImageScientific nameCommon nameDistribution
Ferruginous antbirdDrymophila ferrugineaAtlantic Forest
Bertoni's antbirdDrymophila rubricollissouthern Atlantic Forest
Rufous-tailed antbirdDrymophila geneimid Atlantic Forest
Ochre-rumped antbirdDrymophila ochropygaAtlantic Forest
Dusky-tailed antbirdDrymophila maluraAtlantic Forest
Scaled antbirdDrymophila squamataAtlantic Forest
Striated antbirdDrymophila devilleisouthern Amazonia;
eastern foothills of Colombia and Ecuador
Santa Marta antbirdDrymophila hellmayriSierra Nevada de Santa Marta
-Klages's antbirdDrymophila klagesiSerranía del Perijá, Cordillera de Mérida
and Venezuelan Coastal Range
-East Andean antbirdDrymophila caudatawestern slope of Cordillera Oriental
& upper Magdalena valley
Streak-headed antbirdDrymophila striaticepsNorthern Andes

Former species

Formerly, some authorities also considered the following species as species within the genus Drymophila:
  • Spectacled monarch
  • Island monarch
  • Shining flycatcher

    Distribution

Six of the Drymophila species are associated with regions of southeastern Brazil; two of these - Bertoni's and dusky-tailed antbird - also range into eastern Paraguay and extreme northeastern Argentina.
Even at their highest diversity in Brazil's Mata Atlântica, the species are almost completely parapatric, in some cases like the dusky-tailed and scaled antbird even to exclusive habitat preferences. Of course, the rampant deforestation in that region may obscure that there has been more overlap in the past. In any case, habitat fragments strongly tend to hold at most a single species.
D. devillei, the striated antbird, is a species of the southwestern quadrant of the Amazon Basin, and a disjunct population lives in north-western Ecuador and adjacent parts of Colombia.