Northern chestnut-tailed antbird
species of bird
The northern chestnut-tailed antbird, or Zimmer's antbird, (Sciaphylax castanea) is a species of bird in subfamily Thamnophilinae of family Thamnophilidae, the "typical antbirds". It is found in Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
Taxonomy and systematics
The northern chestnut-tailed antbird was originally described by the American ornithologist John Zimmer in 1932 as a subspecies of the then chestnut-tailed antbird with the trinomial name Myrmeciza hemimelaena castanea. In the early 21st century it was recognized as a separate species, M. castanea, and split from H. hemimemaena. At that time a second subspecies of it was also recognized. Some taxonomic systems call it the "northern chestnut-tailed antbird" and the reduced M. hemimelaena the "southern chestnut-tailed antbird". Other systems called the newly-separated M. castanea "Zimmer's antbird" and retained "chestnut-tailed antbird" for M. hemimelaena.
A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2013 found that genus Myrmeciza, as then defined, was polyphyletic. In the resulting rearrangement to create monophyletic genera M. hemimelaena and M. castanea were moved to a newly erected genus Sciaphylax.
The two subspecies of the northern chestnut-tailed antbird are the nominate S. c.
“Northern chestnut-tailed antbird” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Northern, chestnut-tailed and antbird can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Feb 6, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1265391. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1932 and 2013.
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This entry incorporates text from “Northern chestnut-tailed antbird” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.