''Hemixos'' is a

songbird A songbird is a bird belonging to the suborder Passeri of the perching birds ( Passeriformes). Another name that is sometimes seen as the scientific or vernacular name is Oscines, from Latin ''oscen'', "songbird". The Passeriformes contains 50 ...

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

in the

bulbul The bulbuls are members of a family, Pycnonotidae, of medium-sized passerine songbirds, which also includes greenbuls, brownbuls, leafloves, and bristlebills. The family is distributed across most of Africa and into the Middle East, tropical ...

family Family (from la, familia) is a group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or affinity (by marriage or other relationship). The purpose of the family is to maintain the well-being of its members and of society. Idea ...

, Pycnonotidae.

Taxonomy and systematics

Established by

Edward Blyth Edward Blyth (23 December 1810 – 27 December 1873) was an English zoologist who worked for most of his life in India as a curator of zoology at the museum of the Asiatic Society of India in Calcutta. Blyth was born in London in 1810. In 1841 ...

in 1845 for the newly discovered ashy bulbul (''H. flavala''),Gregory (2000) this genus contains four extant

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of ...

. Some treatments merge the genus into ''

Hypsipetes __NOTOC__ ''Hypsipetes'' is a genus of bulbuls, songbirds in the family Pycnonotidae. Most of its species occur in tropical forests around the Indian Ocean. But while the genus is quite diverse in the Madagascar region at the western end of its ...

'', often together with the rest of the traditional "''Hypsipetes'' group" of

s: ''

Iole In Greek mythology, Iole (; grc, Ἰόλη ) was the daughter of King Eurytus of Oechalia. According to the brief epitome in the '' Bibliotheca'', Eurytus had a beautiful young daughter named Iole who was eligible for marriage. Iole was claimed ...

'', ''

Ixos ''Ixos'' is a genus of passerine birds in the bulbul family, Pycnonotidae. Taxonomy and systematics The genus ''Ixos'' was introduced in 1825 by the Dutch zoologist Coenraad Jacob Temminck to accommodate the Javan bulbul. The genus name is th ...

'', '' Microscelis'' and '' Tricholestes''. But in this case, the closely related genera '' Alophoixus'' and '' Setornis'' would probably also have to be included, and as soon as the earliest described genus, ''Ixos'', is merged with another its name would apply. In fact, ''Hemixos'' is not particularly close to ''Hypsipetes'', and a merger is not well justified.

mtDNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondrion, mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mit ...

NADH dehydrogenase NADH dehydrogenase is an enzyme that converts nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) from its reduced form (NADH) to its oxidized form (NAD+). Members of the NADH dehydrogenase family and analogues are commonly systematically named using the for ...

subunits 2 and 3 and nDNA β-fibrinogen

intron An intron is any nucleotide sequence within a gene that is not expressed or operative in the final RNA product. The word ''intron'' is derived from the term ''intragenic region'', i.e. a region inside a gene."The notion of the cistron .e., gene ...

sequence In mathematics, a sequence is an enumerated collection of objects in which repetitions are allowed and order matters. Like a set, it contains members (also called ''elements'', or ''terms''). The number of elements (possibly infinite) is called ...

data puts it closer to (but still well distant from) the streaked bulbul (''Ixos malaccensis''). But whether that species represents the core group of ''Ixos'' – around its

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen( ...

'' I. virescens'' (Sunda bulbul or green-winged bulbul) –, or a distinct lineage worthy of separation in a new genus – in which case ''Hypsipetes'' might be merged into the core group of ''Ixos'' – has not been studied. In any case, though minor, the ''Hemixos'' lineage with its stark white throat and light wing patches seems well distinct.

Extant species

Four species are currently recognised: * Cream-striped bulbul (''Hemixos leucogrammicus''; moved from ''Pycnonotus'' following molecular phylogenetic analyses) * Ashy bulbul (''Hemixos flavala'') * Cinereous bulbul (''Hemixos cinereus'') * Chestnut bulbul (''Hemixos castanonotus'')

Former species

Previously, some authorities also classified the following species (or subspecies) as species within the genus ''Hemixos'': * Sumatran bulbul (as ''Hemixus sumatranus'')

Footnotes

References

* Gregory, Steven M. (2000): Nomenclature of the Hypsipetes Bulbuls (Pycnonotidae). '' Forktail'' 16: 164–166
PDF fulltext
* Moyle, Robert G. & Marks, Ben D. (2006): Phylogenetic relationships of the bulbuls (Aves: Pycnonotidae) based on mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequence data. '' Mol. Phylogenet. Evol.'' 40(3): 687–695. (HTML abstract) * Pasquet, Éric; Han, Lian-Xian; Khobkhet, Obhas & Cibois, Alice (2001): Towards a molecular systematics of the genus ''Criniger'', and a preliminary phylogeny of the bulbuls (Aves, Passeriformes, Pycnonotidae). ''Zoosystema'' 23(4): 857–863
PDF fulltext
{{Taxonbar, from=Q339465 Bulbuls Bird genera Taxa named by Edward Blyth Taxonomy articles created by Polbot