Laniarius

Laniarus
	Yellow-crowned gonolek; Laniarius barbarus
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Malaconotidae
Genus:	Laniarius; Vieillot, 1816
Type species
	Lanius barbarus; Linnaeus, 1766
Species
	see text

Laniarius is a genus of brightly coloured, carnivorous passerine birds commonly known as boubous or gonoleks. Not to be confused with the similar-sounding genus Lanius, they were formerly classed with the true shrikes in the family Laniidae, but they and related genera are now considered sufficiently distinctive to be separated from that group as the bush-shrike family Malaconotidae.

This is an African group of species which are found in scrub or open woodland. They are similar in habits to shrikes, hunting insects and other small prey from a perch on a bush. Although similar in build to the shrikes, these tend to be either colourful species or largely black. Some species are also quite secretive.

Taxonomy and systematics

The genus Laniarius was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816 to accommodate a single species, the yellow-crowned gonolek, which is therefore the type species.^[1]^[2]

The closest relatives of the genus appear to be the genus Chlorophoneus. Previously, members of the genus Laniarius had been classified on the basis of plumage. However, a 2008 molecular study found that the species had developed different colours and patterns in plumage independently and similar-coloured species were often unrelated. The authors hypothesized that the ancestor of the genus may have been dark-coloured.^[3]

There are 22 recognised species:^[4]

Common Name	Scientific name	Distribution
Lowland sooty boubou	Laniarius leucorhynchus	Angola, Benin, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, South Sudan, Togo, and Uganda.
Mountain sooty boubou	Laniarius poensis	Nigeria, Bioko; Rwanda, Burundi and adjacent areas of Uganda and Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Albertine sooty boubou	Laniarius holomelas	Uganda and Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Willard’s sooty boubou	Laniarius willardi	Burundi and Uganda
Fuelleborn's boubou	Laniarius fuelleborni	Malawi, Tanzania, and Zambia
Slate-colored boubou	Laniarius funebris	Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Lühder's bushshrike	Laniarius luehderi	Angola, Burundi, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Braun's bushshrike	Laniarius brauni	Angola
Gabela bushshrike	Laniarius amboimensis	Angola.
Red-naped bushshrike	Laniarius ruficeps	Ethiopia, Kenya, and Somalia
Black boubou	Laniarius nigerrimus	Somalia and northern Kenya.
Ethiopian boubou	Laniarius aethiopicus	Eritrea, Ethiopia, northwest Somalia, and northern Kenya.
Tropical boubou	Laniarius major	sub-Saharan Africa
East Coast boubou	Laniarius sublacteus	southeast Somalia to northeast Tanzania, and Zanzibar island.
Southern boubou	Laniarius ferrugineus	southeastern Zimbabwe, eastern Botswana, Mozambique and southern and eastern South Africa
Swamp boubou	Laniarius bicolor	Angola, Botswana, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, DRC, Gabon, Namibia, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Turati's boubou	Laniarius turatii	Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, and Sierra Leone
Yellow-crowned gonolek	Laniarius barbarus	Senegal and Democratic Republic of Congo east to Ethiopia.
Papyrus gonolek	Laniarius mufumbiri	Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda
Black-headed gonolek	Laniarius erythrogaster	Burundi, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda.
Crimson-breasted shrike	Laniarius atrococcineus	southern Angola to the Free State province in South Africa.
Yellow-breasted boubou	Laniarius atroflavus	western Cameroon and adjacent southeastern Nigeria

Formerly, some authorities also considered the following species (or subspecies) as species within the genus Laniarius:

Rufous whistler (as Laniarius rubrigaster)^[5]

References

^ Vieillot, Louis Pierre (1816). Analyse d'une Nouvelle Ornithologie Élémentaire (in French). Paris: Deterville/self. p. 41.
^ Mayr, Ernst; Greenway, James C. Jr, eds. (1960). Check-List of Birds of the World. Vol. 9. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Museum of Comparative Zoology. p. 326.
^ Nguembock, Billy; Fjeldså, Jon; Couloux, Arnaud; Pasquet, Eric (2008). "Phylogeny of Laniarius: molecular data reveal L. liberatus synonymous with L. erlangeri and "plumage coloration" as unreliable morphological characters for defining species and species groups". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 48 (2): 396–407. Bibcode:2008MolPE..48..396N. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2008.04.014. PMID 18514549.
^ Gill, Frank; Donsker, David; Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (January 2023). "Batises, woodshrikes, bushshrikes, vangas". IOC World Bird List Version 13.1. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 25 March 2023.
^ Australia, Atlas of Living. "Pachycephala (Alisterornis) rufiventris rufiventris | Atlas of Living Australia". bie.ala.org.au. Retrieved 2017-02-06.

[1] Vieillot, Louis Pierre (1816). Analyse d'une Nouvelle Ornithologie Élémentaire (in French). Paris: Deterville/self. p. 41.

[2] Mayr, Ernst; Greenway, James C. Jr, eds. (1960). Check-List of Birds of the World. Vol. 9. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Museum of Comparative Zoology. p. 326.

[nguembock-3] Nguembock, Billy; Fjeldså, Jon; Couloux, Arnaud; Pasquet, Eric (2008). "Phylogeny of Laniarius: molecular data reveal L. liberatus synonymous with L. erlangeri and "plumage coloration" as unreliable morphological characters for defining species and species groups". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 48 (2): 396–407. Bibcode:2008MolPE..48..396N. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2008.04.014. PMID 18514549.

[ioc-4] Gill, Frank; Donsker, David; Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (January 2023). "Batises, woodshrikes, bushshrikes, vangas". IOC World Bird List Version 13.1. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 25 March 2023.

[5] Australia, Atlas of Living. "Pachycephala (Alisterornis) rufiventris rufiventris | Atlas of Living Australia". bie.ala.org.au. Retrieved 2017-02-06.

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