The ioras are a small family, Aegithinidae, of four

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped') which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines generally have an anisodactyl arrangement of their ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

found in south and southeast

Asia Asia ( , ) is the largest continent in the world by both land area and population. It covers an area of more than 44 million square kilometres, about 30% of Earth's total land area and 8% of Earth's total surface area. The continent, which ...

. The family is composed of a single genus, ''Aegithina''. They were formerly grouped with the

leafbird The leafbirds (Chloropseidae) are a family of small passerine bird species found in the Indian Subcontinent and Southeast Asia. They were formerly grouped with the ioras and fairy-bluebirds in the family Irenidae. As presently defined, the leaf ...

s and

fairy-bluebird The three fairy-bluebirds are small passerine bird species found in forests and plantations in tropical southern Asia and the Philippines. They are the sole members of the genus ''Irena'' and family Irenidae, and are related to the ioras and le ...

s, in the family Irenidae.

Taxonomy and systematics

The genus ''Aegithina'' was introduced in 1816 by the French ornithologist

Louis Pierre Vieillot Louis Pierre Vieillot (10 May 1748, Yvetot – 24 August 1830, Sotteville-lès-Rouen) was a French ornithologist. Vieillot is the author of the first scientific descriptions and Linnaean names of a number of birds, including species he collected ...

to accommodate the

common iora The common iora (''Aegithina tiphia'') is a small passerine bird found across the tropical Indian subcontinent and Southeast Asia, with populations showing plumage variations, some of which are designated as subspecies. A species found in scrub a ...

. The genus name is from

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

''aigithos'' or ''aiginthos'', a mythical bird mentioned by

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...

and other classical authors. The common iora was described in 1758 and given the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, both of which use Latin grammatical forms, altho ...

''Motacilla tiphia'' by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné,#Blunt, Blunt (2004), p. 171. was a Swedish biologist and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming o ...

, but there was a some confusion about the nature of bird Linnaeus was referring to. Early taxonomists considered it to variously be a warbler, flycatcher, finch or babbler. When G. R. Gray erected the family Aegithinidae in 1869 he included a number of babbler genera in it with the ioras.

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 Asiatic Society, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. He set about updating the museum ...

, working in the 1850s, was the first to connect the ioras with the leafbirds and fairy-bluebirds, and included all these with the bulbuls.

Species of Aegithinidae

Description

The ioras are small to medium small sized passerines, ranging from in length. Overall the males are larger than the females. These are reminiscent of 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, tropic ...

s, but whereas that group tends to be drab in colouration, the ioras are more brightly coloured. The group exhibits

sexual dimorphism Sexual dimorphism is the condition where sexes of the same species exhibit different Morphology (biology), morphological characteristics, including characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most dioecy, di ...

in its plumage, with the males being brightly plumaged in yellows and greens. Unlike the leafbirds, ioras have thin legs, and their bills are proportionately longer. Calls are strident whistles; songs are musical to human ears.

Habitat and distribution

Their habitats include

acacia ''Acacia'', commonly known as wattles or acacias, is a genus of about of shrubs and trees in the subfamily Mimosoideae of the pea family Fabaceae. Initially, it comprised a group of plant species native to Africa, South America, and Austral ...

scrub, forest edge, and closed forests, as well as agricultural land and (in the

) gardens. They are generally lowland birds, with most reaching only as high as the submontane forests. They are generally highly arboreal and usually occur in the tree canopy, with only very rare records of this family coming down to the ground. The family is overwhelmingly non-migratory, although in West India there is some evidence that Marshall's ioras and

s are partly migratory in the seasonal semi-desert fringe.

Behaviour and ecology

Ioras eat insects and spiders, which they find by nimbly

gleaning Gleaning is the act of collecting leftover crops in the field after harvest. During harvest, there is food that is left or missed often because it does not meet store standards for uniformity. Sometimes, fields are left because they were not ec ...

the leaves of the slenderest outer twigs. In the two species whose male courtship displays are known, they are elaborate, culminating in the males' parachute-style descent looking like "green balls of fluff". The nests are compact open cups felted to branches with spiderweb. Females lay 2 or 3 eggs, which have pinkish speckles and red and purple lines. They incubate at night; the males, by day. Incubation lasts about 14 days. Both parents are responsible for brooding and feeding the chicks.

Relationship with humans

Ioras will commonly live close to humans and even lives in the suburbs of cites like

Singapore Singapore, officially the Republic of Singapore, is an island country and city-state in Southeast Asia. The country's territory comprises one main island, 63 satellite islands and islets, and one outlying islet. It is about one degree ...

. They are mostly not threatened by human activities, although the green iora is listed as

near threatened A near-threatened species is a species which has been Conservation status, categorized as "Near Threatened" (NT) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as that may be vulnerable to Endangered species, endangerment in the ne ...

by the

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status ...

habitat loss Habitat destruction (also termed habitat loss or habitat reduction) occurs when a natural habitat is no longer able to support its native species. The organisms once living there have either moved elsewhere, or are dead, leading to a decrease ...

being responsible for its decline. Unlike many other passerines they are not common species in the cage bird trade.

References

External links

Iora videos, photos & sounds
on the Internet Bird Collection {{Taxonbar, from=Q15013811 * Birds of Indomalaya Taxa named by Louis Pierre Vieillot