White-winged black tit | |
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Nominate race in Ethiopia | |
M. l. subsp. insignis in Angola | |
Scientific classification | |
Domain: | Eukaryota |
Kingdom: | Animalia |
Phylum: | Chordata |
Class: | Aves |
Order: | Passeriformes |
Family: | Paridae |
Genus: | Melaniparus |
Species: | M. leucomelas
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Binomial name | |
Melaniparus leucomelas (
Rüppell, 1840)
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Map showing ranges of two races, respectively north and south of equator | |
Synonyms | |
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The white-winged black tit (Melaniparus leucomelas) is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is also known as the white-winged tit, dark-eyed black tit or northern black tit. [2] The species was first described by Eduard Rüppell in 1840.
It is mainly black with a white wing patch, but differs from the more northern white-shouldered tit (Melaniparus guineensis) with which it sometimes considered conspecific in that it has a dark eye.
It is found in central Africa, from Angola in the west to Ethiopia in the east. There are two races: [3]
The white-winged black tit was formerly one of the many species in the genus Parus but was moved to Melaniparus after a molecular phylogenetic analysis published in 2013 showed that the members of the new genus formed a distinct clade. [4] [5]