Starling

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This article is about the bird family. For other uses, see Starling (disambiguation).
Starlings

European Starling, Sturnus vulgaris
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Sturnidae
Rafinesque, 1815
Genera

Nearly 30, see text.

Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae. The name "Sturnidae" comes from the Latin word for Starling, sturnus. Starlings occur naturally only in the Old World (Europe, Asia and Africa), some forms as far east as Australia, but several European and Asian species have been introduced to North America, Australia, and New Zealand.

Starlings have strong feet, their flight is strong and direct, and they are very gregarious. Their preferred habitat is fairly open country, and they eat insects and fruit. Several species live around human habitation, and are effectively omnivores. Many species search for food by opening the bill after probing it into dense vegetation; this behavior is called "open-bill probing" or is referred to by the German word "zirkeln" (IPA: ['tsɪʁkl̩n]).

Plumage is typically dark with a metallic sheen. Most species nest in holes, laying blue or white eggs.

Many Asian species, particularly the larger ones, are called mynas, and many African species are known as glossy starlings because of their iridescent plumage.

The shortest-bodied species is Kenrick’s Starling (Poeoptera kenricki), at 15 centimetres (6 in), but the lightest-weight species is Abbott’s Starling (Pholia femoralis), at 34 grams (1.2 oz). The largest starlings are the mynas of the genus Mino, especially the Yellow-faced (Mino dumontii) and Long-tailed Mynas (Mino kreffti). These mynas can exceed 30 centimetres (1 ft) and weigh over 225 grams (8& oz).

Contents

  • 1 Systematics
    • 1.1 Oriental-Australasian clade
    • 1.2 Afrotropical-Palearctic clade
    • 1.3 Unresolved
  • 2 References
    • 2.1 Footnotes
  • 3 External links


European Starlings are in decline in Europe. However, when introduced to North America they have been a factor in reducing native cavity nesting bird populations (such as Bluebirds and Red-headed Woodpeckers) by competing aggressively for nesting cavities.

Starlings were first brought to North America in the 1890s by Eugene Schieffelin, a wealthy New York pharmacologist and Shakespeare enthusiast (NGS 2002). It is said (though no evidence supports this) that his purpose was to introduce into North America all the birds mentioned in William Shakespeare's plays.[citation needed] As starlings receive a brief mention in Henry IV, Part 1, Schieffelin introduced 60 of the birds in Central Park, New York.

Starlings have diverse and complex vocalizations, and have been known to imbed sounds from their surroundings into their own calls, including car alarms, and human speech patterns. The birds can recognize particular individuals by their calls, and are currently the subject of research into the evolution of human language.[1]

[edit] Systematics

The starlings belong to the superfamily Muscicapoidea, together with thrushes, flycatchers and chats, as well as dippers which are quite distant and Mimidae (thrashers and mockingbirds). The latter are apparently the Sturnidae's closest living relatives, replace them in the Americas, and have a rather similar but more solitary lifestyle. They are morphologically quite similar too - a partly albinistic specimen of a mimid, mislabelled as to suggest an Old World origin, was for many decades believed to represent an extinct starling (see Rodrigues Starling for details).

The oxpeckers are sometimes placed here as a subfamily, but the weight of evidence has shifted towards granting them full family ststus as a more basal member of the Sturnidae-Mimidae group, derived from an early expansion into Africa.

Usually the starlings are considered a family, as is done here. Sibley & Monroe (1990) included the mimids in the family and demoted the starlings to tribe rank, as Sturnini. This treatment was used by Zuccon et al. (2006). However, the grouping of Sibley & Monroe (besides leaving the subfamily rank vacant[verification needed]) is overly coarse due to methodological drawbacks of their DNA-DNA hybridization technique and most of their proposed revisions of taxonomic rank have not been accepted (see for example Ciconiiformes). The all-inclusive Sturnidae grouping is all but noninformative as regards biogeography, and obscures the evolutionary distinctness of the three lineages. Establishing a valid name for the clade consisting of Sibley/Monroe's "pan-Sturnidae" would nonetheless be desirable to contrast them with the other major lineages of Muscicapoidea.

Starlings probably originated in the general area of the East Asia, perhaps towards the southwestern Pacific, as evidenced by the number of plesiomorphic lineages to occur there. Expansion into Africa appears to have occurred later, as most derived forms are found there. An alternative scenario would be African origin for the entire "sturnoid" (as per Zuccon et al. 2006) group, with the oxpeckers representing an ancient relict and the mimids arriving in South America. This is contradicted by the North American distribution of the most basal Mimidae.(Cibois & Cracraft 2004, Zuccon et al. 2006)

As the fossil record is limited to quite Recent forms, the proposed Early Miocene (about 25-20 mya) divergence dates for the "sturnoids" lineages must be considered extemely tentative. Given the overall evidence for origin of most Passeri families in the first half of the Miocene, it appears to be not too far off the mark however.(Zuccon et al. 2006)
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Recent studies (Cibois & Cracraft 2004, Zuccon et al. 2006) identified two major clades of this family, corresponding to the generally drab, often striped, largish "atypical mynas" and other mainly Asian-Pacific lineages, and the often smaller, sometimes highly apomorphic taxa which are most common in Africa and the Palearctic, usually have metallic coloration, and in a number of species also bright carotinoid plumage colors on the underside. Inside this latter group, there is a clade consisting of species which, again, are usually not too brightly-colored, and which consists of the "typical" myna-Sturnus assemblage.

Interestingly, the Philippine creepers, a single genus of 3 species of treecreeper-like birds appear to be highly apomorphic members of the more initial radiation of the Sturnidae (Zuccon et al. 2006). While this may seem odd ad first glance, their placement has always been contentious. In addition, biogeography virtually rules out a close relationship of Philippine creepers and treecreepers, as neither the latter nor their close relatives seem have ever reached the Wallacea, let alone the Philippines. Nonetheless, their inclusion in the Sturnidae is not entirely final and eventually they may remain a separate family.

Genus sequence follows traditional treatments. This is apparently not entirely correct, with Scissirostrum closer to Aplonis than to Gracula for example, and Acridotheres among the most advanced genera. Too few taxa have already been studied as regards their relationships however, and thus a change in sequence has to wait.

The upcoming review by Lovette & Rubenstein (in press) promises to resolve most uncertainties (though not the most pressing question: how Sturnus will be split up). Until it has been published, the following list should be considered preliminary.

[edit] Oriental-Australasian clade

Hill mynas, Gracula sp.

[edit] Afrotropical-Palearctic clade

Cape Glossy Starling (Lamprotornis nitens)

[edit] Unresolved

The extinct Mascarene starlings are of uncertain relationships. Only one species is known from specimens taken while the bird was still extant; the other remains only known from subfossil bones and apparently one early traveller's description. The supposed "Leguat's Starling" ("Necropsar leguati") was eventually determined to be a mislabelled albino specimen of the Martinique Trembler (Cinclocerthia gutturalis), a mimid.

As the avifauna of the Mascarenes is predominantly of Indian origin though as old as to be highly distinct, it is not clear to which clade these starlings belong - or even if they are indeed starlings, as the Réunion Starling at least was highly aberrant and there have always been lingering dounbts about whether they are correctly placed here.