The rock-loving cisticola (''Cisticola aberrans''), also known as the lazy cisticola, is a species of bird in the family

Cisticolidae The family Cisticolidae is a group of about 160 warblers, small passerine birds found mainly in warmer southern regions of the Old World. They were formerly included within the Old World warbler family Sylviidae. This family probably originated ...

. It is widespread throughout

sub-Saharan Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...

Africa and is usually associated with rocky wooded terrain with interspersed patchy grass tussocks. It was formerly considered to be

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organism ...

with the Huambo cisticola (''Cisticola bailunduensis'').

Taxonomy

The rock-loving cisticola was

formally described A species description is a formal scientific description of a newly encountered species, typically articulated through a scientific publication. Its purpose is to provide a clear description of a new species of organism and explain how it differ ...

and illustrated in 1843 by the Scottish zoologist Andrew Smith under 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 ...

''Drymoica aberrans'' based on specimens collected near "Port Natal" (now

Durban Durban ( ; , from meaning "bay, lagoon") is the third-most populous city in South Africa, after Johannesburg and Cape Town, and the largest city in the Provinces of South Africa, province of KwaZulu-Natal. Situated on the east coast of South ...

) in South Africa. The specific epithet is from

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

, meaning "deviating" or "aberrant". The rock-loving cisticola is now one of 53 cisticolas placed in the

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

Cisticola __NOTOC__ Cisticolas (pronounced ''sis-TIC-olas'') are a genus of very small insectivorous birds formerly classified in the Old World warbler family Sylviidae, but now usually considered to be in the separate family Cisticolidae, along with other ...

'' that was introduced in 1829 by the German naturalist

Johann Jakob Kaup Johann Jakob von Kaup (10 April 1803 – 4 July 1873) was a German naturalist. A proponent of natural philosophy, he believed in an innate mathematical order in nature and he attempted biological classifications based on the Quinarian system. Kaup ...

. Seven

subspecies In Taxonomy (biology), biological classification, subspecies (: subspecies) is a rank below species, used for populations that live in different areas and vary in size, shape, or other physical characteristics (Morphology (biology), morpholog ...

are recognised: * ''C. a. admiralis'' Bates, GL, 1930 – south Mauritania to Mali, Ghana and Sierra Leone * ''C. a. petrophilus''

Alexander Alexander () is a male name of Greek origin. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here ar ...

, 1907 – north Nigeria to southwest Sudan, northeast DR Congo, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi * ''C. a. emini''

Reichenow Anton Reichenow (1 August 1847 in Charlottenburg – 6 July 1941 in Hamburg) was a German ornithologist and herpetologist. Reichenow was the son-in-law of Jean Cabanis, and worked at the Natural History Museum of Berlin from 1874 to 1921. He was ...

, 1892 – south Kenya and north Tanzania * ''C. a. nyika'' Lynes, 1930 – Zambia and southwest Tanzania to west Malawi, Zimbabwe and west Mozambique * ''C. a. lurio''

Vincent Vincent (Latin: ''Vincentius'') is a masculine given name originating from the Roman name ''Vincentius'', which itself comes from the Latin verb ''vincere'', meaning "to conquer." People with the given name Artists *Vincent Apap (1909–2003) ...

, 1933 – east Malawi and north Mozambique * ''C. a. aberrans'' ( Smith, A, 1843) – southeast Botswana and central South Africa * ''C. a. minor'' Roberts, 1913 – south Mozambique and east South Africa The first three subspecies on the above list (''admiralis'', ''petrophilus'' and ''emini'') have sometimes been considered as a separate species with the English name "rock-loving cisticola" while the other taxa were known as the "lazy cistola". The Huambo cisticola (''Cisticola bailunduensis'') from Angola was formerly treated as another subspecies but is now considered to be a separate species based on the differences in vocalization, morphology and ecology.

Description

The rock-loving cisticola is a medium sized cisticola with an overall length of . It has a plain brown back, a long slender tail, a grey-brown face, a whitish supercilium and a rufous crown. The underparts are whitish.

References

External links

* Lazy cisticola
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
rock-loving cisticola Afromontane endemic bird species rock-loving cisticola Taxa named by Andrew Smith (zoologist) {{cisticolidae-stub