Every day bananas are put on a feeder along the fence line of the garden by the owner of Kumanday Lodge which is situated on the edge of the village of La Florida in Colombia. The village is at 1,670 metres (5,480 ft) on the western side of the Cordillera Central of the northern Andes.
This eye-catching male Flame-rumped Tanager (Ramphocelus flammigerus) was a regular at the bananas while we were staying. There are two sub-species recognised. The other (R. f. icteronotus), from further west, has yellow instead of red in its plumage. There is a hybrid zone between the two where the colour grades from yellowish-orange to reddish-orange. Recent evidence suggests the two populations had once been separated but had met again without ever becoming different species.
The tanager is found from the south of Panama and along a fairly narrow strip of western Colombia to western Ecuador. It is a true tanager (family Thraupidae).
Morales-Rozo A, Tenorio EA, Carling MD, Cadena CD. 2017. Origin and cross-century dynamics of an avian hybrid zone. BMC Evolutionary Biology 17:257. doi:10.1186/s12862-017-1096-7
No comments:
Post a Comment