The Mount Victoria babax (''Pterorhinus woodi'') is a species of

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 are distinguished from other orders of birds by th ...

bird in the family

Leiothrichidae The laughingthrushes are a family, Leiothrichidae, of Old World passerine birds. They are diverse in size and coloration. These are birds of tropical areas, with the greatest variety in Southeast Asia and the Indian subcontinent. The entire fami ...

. It was formerly treated as

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 organ ...

with the

Chinese babax The Chinese babax (''Pterorhinus lanceolatus'') is a species of bird in the family Leiothrichidae. It is found in China, Hong Kong, India, and Myanmar. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests and subtropical or tro ...

(''Pterorhinus lanceolatus'') It is found above in the

Lushai Hills The Lushai (Pron: ˌlʊˈʃaɪ) Hills (or Mizo Hills) are a mountain range in Mizoram and Manipur, India. The range is part of the Patkai range system and its highest point is 2,157 m high Phawngpui, also known as 'Blue Mountain'. Flora and f ...

in the northeast Indian state of

Mizoram Mizoram () is a state in Northeast India, with Aizawl as its seat of government and capital city. The name of the state is derived from "Mizo", the self-described name of the native inhabitants, and "Ram", which in the Mizo language means "lan ...

and across the border into the

Chin Hills The Chin Hills are a range of mountains in Chin State, northwestern Burma (Myanmar), that extends northward into India's Manipur state. Geography The highest peak in the Chin Hills is Khonu Msung, or Mount Victoria, in southern Chin State, whi ...

in western Myanmar.

Taxonomy

The Mount Victoria babax was described by the English ornithologist

Frank Finn Frank Finn FZS, MBOU (1868 – 1 October 1932) was an English ornithologist. Finn was born in Maidstone and educated at Maidstone Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford. He went on a collecting expedition to East Africa in 1892, ...

in 1902 from a specimen collected in

Kanpetlet Kanpetlet (, ) is a town in the Chin State of West Myanmar and the home of the Kanpetlet Township administration body. It is known for Mt. Victoria, the highest peak in the Chin Hills and one of the highest in Western Myanmar, and Natmataung Nat ...

near Mount Victoria (Nat Ma Taung) in western Myanmar. He coined the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Babax woodi''. The

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''woodi'' honours the co-author of the article, Lieutenant Henry Wood (1872-1940), who was a British Army surveyor in India. The Mount Victoria babax was considered as a subspecies of the

until 2005 when the American ornithologists

Pamela Rasmussen Pamela Cecile Rasmussen (born October 16, 1959) is an American ornithologist and expert on Asian birds. She was formerly a research associate at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and is based at the Michigan State University. She ...

and John Anderton argued that the Mount Victoria babax should be treated as a separate species based on the differences in the plumage and song. The authors of a comprehensive

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study published in 2018 estimated that the two taxa split around 1.8 million years ago. The same study found that the babaxes nested in one of three clades formed by the species in the genus ''Garrulax'' and suggested that the group should be placed together in the resurrected genus ''

Pterorhinus ''Pterorhinus'' is a genus of passerine birds in the laughingthrush family Leiothrichidae. Taxonomy The genus was erected by the English zoologist Robert Swinhoe in 1868 with the plain laughingthrush (''Pterorhinus davidi'') as the type species. ...

''. This proposal was adopted by the

International Ornithologists' Union The International Ornithologists' Union, formerly known as the International Ornithological Committee, is a group of about 200 international ornithologists, and is responsible for the International Ornithological Congress and other international ...

References

*Collar, N. J. & Robson C. 2007. Family Timaliidae (Babblers) pp. 70 – 291 in; del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A. & Christie, D.A. eds. ''

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. ...

'', Vol. 12. Picathartes to Tits and Chickadees. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. Pterorhinus Birds described in 1902 Taxobox binomials not recognized by IUCN {{Sylvioidea-stub