Maghreb Lark
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The Maghreb lark (''Galerida macrorhyncha'') is a species of
lark Larks are passerine birds of the family Alaudidae. Larks have a cosmopolitan distribution with the largest number of species occurring in Africa. Only a single species, the horned lark, occurs in North America, and only Horsfield's bush lark occ ...
in the family Alaudidae found in the
Maghreb The Maghreb (; ), also known as the Arab Maghreb () and Northwest Africa, is the western part of the Arab world. The region comprises western and central North Africa, including Algeria, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. The Maghreb al ...
desert of north-western Africa.


Taxonomy and systematics

The Maghreb lark was previously considered to be a subspecies of the
crested lark The crested lark (''Galerida cristata'') is a species of lark widespread across Eurasia and North Africa, northern Africa. It is a non-migratory bird, but can occasionally be found as a Vagrancy (biology), vagrant in Great Britain. Taxonomy and ...
. Clements lumps this bird into the crested lark. It was proved to have diverged genetically from the latter species 1.9 million years ago was accepted as a separate species in 2009. Alban Guillaumet and colleagues noted the distinctiveness of populations from the Maghreb - birds in the dryer parts of Morocco and Tunisia had longer bills while those in more coastal northern parts had shorter bills typical of the European subspecies. The authors sampled the mitochondrial DNA and found they were distinct genetically. The species name is derived from the
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 ...
words ''makros'' "long" and ''rhynchos'' "bill".


Subspecies

Two
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 recognized: * Hauts Plateaux Maghreb lark (''G. m. randonii'') - Loche, 1860: Originally described as a separate species. Found in eastern Morocco and north-western Algeria * North-west Saharan Maghreb lark (''G. m. macrorhyncha'') or Long-billed Maghreb lark - Tristram, 1859: Found in southern Morocco and western Algeria to west-central Mauritania Two syntypes of ''Galerida macrorhyncha'' Tristram
Ibis, 1859, p.57
, an adult male and adult female, are held in the vertebrate zoology collection of
National Museums Liverpool National Museums Liverpool, formerly National Museums and Galleries on Merseyside, comprises several museums and art galleries in and around Liverpool in Merseyside, England. All the museums and galleries in the group have free admission. The mu ...
at World Museum, with accession numbers NML-VZ T17849 & ML-VZ T17850. The specimens were collected in Laghouat, Sahara, Algeria on 11–12 November 1856 by H. B. Tristram. The specimen came to the Liverpool national collection through the purchase of Canon
Henry Baker Tristram Henry Baker Tristram FRS (11 May 1822 – 8 March 1906) was an English clergyman, Bible scholar, traveller and ornithologist. As a parson-naturalist he was an early, but short-lived, supporter of Darwinism, attempting to reconcile evolution an ...
's collection by the museum in 1896.


References

Maghreb lark Birds of North Africa Maghreb lark Taxa named by Henry Baker Tristram {{Alaudidae-stub