Northern chestnut-tailed antbird

Northern chestnut-tailed antbird
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Thamnophilidae
Genus:	Sciaphylax
Species:	S. castanea
Binomial name
Sciaphylax castanea (Zimmer, JT, 1932)
Synonyms
Myrmeciza hemimelaena castanea Myrmeciza castanea

The northern chestnut-tailed antbird (Sciaphylax castanea) is a species of bird in the family Thamnophilidae. It is found in the Amazon Rainforest in northeastern Peru and far eastern Ecuador.

The northern chestnut-tailed antbird was originally described by the American ornithologist John Zimmer in 1932 as a subspecies of the southern chestnut-tailed antbird with the trinomial name Myrmeciza hemimelaena castanea. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 found that the genus Myrmeciza, as then defined, was polyphyletic. In the resulting rearrangement to create monophyletic genera the northern chestnut-tailed antbird and the southern chestnut-tailed antbird were moved to a newly erected genus Sciaphylax.

Description

Sciaphylax castanea is 11–12 cm in length and weighs 16–17 grams. It is similar to its congener Sciaphylax hemimelaena, but differentiated by their vocalisations. The tail is short. The male has a dark gray head and neck and reddish-brown upper parts, the wing coverts are blackish with white or yellowish-brown tips, the tail is rufous-brown; the throat and breast are black with gray and brown on the sides and flanks, the midribs are white. The female is similar to the male, but paler; the throat and breast are chestnut to rufous orange, the belly is white tinged with yellowish brown.