Thrushes are common, medium-sized birds that eat worms, insects, and fruit. They live in a variety of habitats, including woodlands, swamps, suburbs, and parks. Most thrushes build nests of mud and vegetation on the ground or in the crotches of trees or shrubs; bluebirds nest in holes in trees and posts or in nest boxes. This group forages primarily on the ground and in low vegetation by probing and gleaning. Some thrushes are neotropical migrants while others reside year-round in North America. Thrushes range in size from the eastern and western bluebirds (18 cm from bill tip to tail tip) to the American robin (25 cm). Male and female plumages are similar in most thrushes, although in some species, such as the bluebirds, the males are more brightly colored.
Molecular Biology and Genetics
Statistics of barcoding coverage
|Specimen Records:||1,571||Public Records:||485|
|Specimens with Sequences:||1,112||Public Species:||69|
|Specimens with Barcodes:||1,092||Public BINs:||63|
|Species With Barcodes:||99|
Thrushes are plump, soft-plumaged, small to medium-sized birds, inhabiting wooded areas, and often feed on the ground. The smallest thrush may be the Forest Rock Thrush, at 21 g (0.74 oz) and 14.5 cm (5.7 in). However, the shortwings, which have ambiguous alliances with both thrushes and Old World flycatchers, can be even smaller. The Lesser Shortwing averages 12 cm (4.7 in). The largest thrush is Blue Whistling Thrush, at 178 g (6.3 oz) and 33 cm (13 in). The Great Thrush is similar in length but less heavily built. Most species are grey or brown in colour, often with speckled underparts.
They are insectivorous, but most species also eat worms, land snails, and fruit. Many species are permanently resident in warm climates, while others migrate to higher latitudes during summer, often over considerable distances.
Turdidae species spread the seeds of plants, contributing to the dispersal of many species and the recovery of ecosystems.
Plants have limited seed dispersal mobility away from the parent plant and consequently rely upon a variety of dispersal vectors to transport their propagules, including both abiotic and biotic vectors. Seeds can be dispersed away from the parent plant individually or collectively, as well as dispersed in both space and time.
Many bats and birds rely heavily on fruits for their diet, including birds in the families Cotingidae, Columbidae, Trogonidae, Turdidae, and Rhamphastidae. While eating fruits these animals swallow seeds and then later regurgitate them or pass them in their faeces. Such ornithochory has been a major mechanism of seed dispersal across ocean barriers.
Other seeds may stick to the feet or feathers of birds, and in this way may travel long distances. Seeds of grasses, spores of algae, and the eggs of molluscs and other invertebrates commonly establish in remote areas after long journeys of this sort. The Turdidae group have a great ecological importance because some populations migrate long distances and they disperse the seeds of many endangered species into the swallow berries at new sites helping to eliminate inbreeding and increasing the genetic diversity of plant species.
The taxonomic treatment of this large family has varied significantly in recent years. Traditionally, the Turdidae included the small Old World species, like the Nightingale and European Robin in the subfamily Saxicolini, but most authorities now place this group in the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae.
This article follows the Handbook of the Birds of the World with edits from Clement and Hathaway, Thrushes (2000), and retains the large thrushes in Turdidae. Recent biochemical studies place certain traditional thrush genera (Monticola, Pseudocossyphus, Myiophonus, Brachypteryx, and Alethe) in the Muscicapidae. Conversely the Asian saxicoline genera Grandala and Cochoa belong here among the thrushes.
- Genus Turdus: true thrushes (some 65 species, 1 recently extinct)
- Genus Platycichla: (2 species) – part of a South American group within Turdus
- Genus Nesocichla: Tristan Thrush or Starchy – part of a South American group within Turdus
- Genus Cichlherminia: Forest Thrush – genus paraphyletic with Turdus
- Genus Psophocichla: Groundscraper Thrush
- Genus Zoothera: Asian thrushes (some 15 species, 1 recently extinct)
- Genus Geokichla: (21 species)
- Genus Catharus: typical American thrushes and nightingale-thrushes (12 species)
- Genus Hylocichla: Wood Thrush
- Genus Ridgwayia: Aztec Thrush – related to Hylocichla
- Genus Ixoreus: Varied Thrush – related to other New World genera
- Genus Cataponera: Sulawesi Thrush
- Genus Sialia: bluebirds (3 species)
- Genus Grandala: related to Sialia
- Genus Cichlopsis: Rufous-brown Solitaire – related to Catharus
- Genus Entomodestes: solitaires (2 species) – related to Catharus
- Genus Myadestes: solitaires (10–11 living species, 2–3 recently extinct) (includes formerly recognized genus Phaeornis)
- Genus Neocossyphus: rufous thrushes (4 species) – related to Myadestes
- Genus Cochoa: cochoas (4 species)
- Genus Chlamydochaera: Fruithunter
- Genus Alethe: Alethes (2 species)
- Genus Pseudalethe: Pseudalethes (4 species)
Now usually considered a distinct family distantly related to Picathartes:
- Genus Chaetops: rock-jumpers (2 species)
- Thrushes by Peter Clement. Princeton University Press (2001), ISBN 978-0-691-08852-5.
- Perrins, C. (1991). Forshaw, Joseph, ed. Encyclopaedia of Animals: Birds. London: Merehurst Press. pp. 186–187. ISBN 1-85391-186-0.
|This article does not cite any references or sources. (December 2009)|
For other uses, see Solitaire (disambiguation)