The red-headed quelea (''Quelea erythrops'') is a species of bird in the family Ploceidae. It is found in Angola, Benin, Botswana, Burkina Faso,

Burundi Burundi (, ), officially the Republic of Burundi ( rn, Repuburika y’Uburundi ; Swahili language, Swahili: ''Jamuhuri ya Burundi''; French language, French: ''République du Burundi'' ), is a landlocked country in the Great Rift Valley at the ...

Chad Chad (; ar, تشاد , ; french: Tchad, ), officially the Republic of Chad, '; ) is a landlocked country at the crossroads of North and Central Africa. It is bordered by Libya to the north, Sudan to the east, the Central African Republic ...

Republic of the Congo The Republic of the Congo (french: République du Congo, ln, Republíki ya Kongó), also known as Congo-Brazzaville, the Congo Republic or simply either Congo or the Congo, is a country located in the western coast of Central Africa to the w ...

, Democratic Republic of the Congo,

Ivory Coast Ivory Coast, also known as Côte d'Ivoire, officially the Republic of Côte d'Ivoire, is a country on the southern coast of West Africa. Its capital is Yamoussoukro, in the centre of the country, while its largest city and economic centre is ...

Equatorial Guinea Equatorial Guinea ( es, Guinea Ecuatorial; french: Guinée équatoriale; pt, Guiné Equatorial), officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea ( es, link=no, República de Guinea Ecuatorial, french: link=no, République de Guinée équatoria ...

Eswatini Eswatini ( ; ss, eSwatini ), officially the Kingdom of Eswatini and formerly named Swaziland ( ; officially renamed in 2018), is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by Mozambique to its northeast and South Africa to its no ...

, Ethiopia, Gabon,

Gambia The Gambia,, ff, Gammbi, ar, غامبيا officially the Republic of The Gambia, is a country in West Africa. It is the smallest country within mainland AfricaHoare, Ben. (2002) ''The Kingfisher A-Z Encyclopedia'', Kingfisher Publicatio ...

, Ghana,

Guinea Guinea ( ),, fuf, 𞤘𞤭𞤲𞤫, italic=no, Gine, wo, Gine, nqo, ߖߌ߬ߣߍ߫, bm, Gine officially the Republic of Guinea (french: République de Guinée), is a coastal country in West Africa. It borders the Atlantic Ocean to the we ...

, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya,

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, Malawi, Mali, Mozambique, Niger, Nigeria,

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São Tomé and Príncipe São Tomé and Príncipe (; pt, São Tomé e Príncipe (); English: " Saint Thomas and Prince"), officially the Democratic Republic of São Tomé and Príncipe ( pt, República Democrática de São Tomé e Príncipe), is a Portuguese-speaking i ...

, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, South Sudan, Tanzania, Togo, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

Taxonomy and naming

The red-headed quelea was collected by Carl Weiss on

Sao Tome island SAO or Sao may refer to: Places * Sao civilisation, in Middle Africa from 6th century BC to 16th century AD * Sao, a town in Boussé Department, Burkina Faso * Saco Transportation Center (station code SAO), a train station in Saco, Maine, U.S. ...

in 1847, and after its arrival at the Hamburg Museum described for science for the first time by Gustav Hartlaub in 1848, who named it ''Ploceus erythrops''. In 1951, Hans von Boetticher regarded the cardinal quelea and red-headed quelea sufficiently different from the red-billed quelea to create a new genus ''Queleopsis''. The species

epithet An epithet (, ), also byname, is a descriptive term (word or phrase) known for accompanying or occurring in place of a name and having entered common usage. It has various shades of meaning when applied to seemingly real or fictitious people, di ...

''erythrops'' derives from the Greek word ἐρυθρός (eruthros), meaning "red" and ὄψ (ops) meaning "eye" or "face", referring to the rufous or red face.

Ludwig Reichenbach Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach (8 January 1793 – 17 March 1879) was a German botanist and ornithologist. It was he who first requested Leopold Blaschka to make a set of glass marine invertebrate models for scientific education and museu ...

gave the species its first English name in 1863: red-headed dioch. Other vernacular names in the English language include pokerhead, and red-headed weaver. Its vernacular name in

Swahili Swahili may refer to: * Swahili language, a Bantu language official in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda and widely spoken in the African Great Lakes * Swahili people, an ethnic group in East Africa * Swahili culture Swahili culture is the culture of ...

is ''kwelea kichwa-chekundu''.

Phylogeny

Based on recent DNA-analysis, the red-headed quelea forms a clade with the cardinal quelea (''Q. cardinalis''), and this clade is sister to the red-billed quelea ''Q. quelea''. The genus ''Quelea'' belongs to the group of true weavers (subfamily Ploceinae), and is most related to '' Foudia'', a genus of six or seven species that occur on the islands of the western Indian Ocean. This clade is sister to the Asian species of the genus '' Ploceus''. The following tree represents current insight of the relationships between the species of ''Quelea'', and their closest relatives.

References

External links

* Red-headed Quelea
Species text in The Atlas of Southern African Birds
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1301039 red-headed quelea Birds of Sub-Saharan Africa Birds of the Gulf of Guinea red-headed quelea Taxonomy articles created by Polbot