The ''Acrocephalus'' warblers are small, insectivorous

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 ...

s belonging to the genus ''Acrocephalus''. Formerly in the

paraphyletic Paraphyly is a taxonomic term describing a grouping that consists of the grouping's last common ancestor and some but not all of its descendant lineages. The grouping is said to be paraphyletic ''with respect to'' the excluded subgroups. In co ...

Old World warbler The Old World warblers are a large group of birds formerly grouped together in the bird family Sylviidae. They are not closely related to the New World warblers. The family held over 400 species in over 70 genera, and were the source of much taxo ...

assemblage, they are now separated as the namesake of the marsh and tree warbler family Acrocephalidae. They are sometimes called marsh warblers or reed warblers, but this invites confusion with marsh warbler and reed warbler. These are rather drab brownish warblers usually associated with

marsh In ecology, a marsh is a wetland that is dominated by herbaceous plants rather than by woody plants.Keddy, P.A. 2010. Wetland Ecology: Principles and Conservation (2nd edition). Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. 497 p More in genera ...

es or other wetlands. Some are streaked, others plain. Many species breeding in temperate regions are migratory. This genus has heavily diversified into many species throughout islands across the tropical

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean, or, depending on the definition, to Antarctica in the south, and is bounded by the cont ...

. This in turn has led to many of the resulting insular

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found only in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also foun ...

species to become

endangered An endangered species is a species that is very likely to become extinct in the near future, either worldwide or in a particular political jurisdiction. Endangered species may be at risk due to factors such as habitat loss, poaching, inv ...

. Several of these species (including all but one of the species endemic to the

Marianas The Mariana Islands ( ; ), also simply the Marianas, are a crescent-shaped archipelago comprising the summits of fifteen longitudinally oriented, mostly Volcano#Dormant and reactivated, dormant volcanic mountains in the northwestern Pacific Ocean ...

and two endemic to

French Polynesia French Polynesia ( ; ; ) is an overseas collectivity of France and its sole #Governance, overseas country. It comprises 121 geographically dispersed islands and atolls stretching over more than in the Pacific Ocean, South Pacific Ocean. The t ...

) have already gone

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

. The most enigmatic species of the genus, the large-billed reed warbler (''A. orinus''), was rediscovered in

Thailand Thailand, officially the Kingdom of Thailand and historically known as Siam (the official name until 1939), is a country in Southeast Asia on the Mainland Southeast Asia, Indochinese Peninsula. With a population of almost 66 million, it spa ...

in March, 2006; it was found also in a remote corner of

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. It is bordered by Pakistan to the Durand Line, east and south, Iran to the Afghanistan–Iran borde ...

in the summer of 2009. Prior to these recent sightings, it had been found only once before, in 1867.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Acrocephalus'' was introduced in 1811 by the German naturalist Johann Andreas Naumann and his son

Johann Friedrich Naumann Johann Friedrich Naumann (14 February 1780 – 15 August 1857) was a German scientist, engraver, and editor. He is regarded as the founder of scientific ornithology in Europe. He published ''The Natural History of German Birds'' (1820–1844) ...

. The

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the spe ...

was designated as ''Turdus arundinaceus''

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 ...

, 1758, by the English zoologist George Gray in 1840. This is the great reed warbler. Many species have a flat head profile, which gives rise to the genus name, ''Acrocephalus'' 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 ...

''akros'', "highest", and ''kephale'', "head". It is possible that the Naumanns thought ''akros'' meant "sharp-pointed".

List of species in taxonomic order

The genus contains 42 species of which 6 insular forms are now extinct: * Basra reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus griseldis'' * Cape Verde warbler, ''Acrocephalus brevipennis'' * Greater swamp warbler, ''Acrocephalus rufescens'' * Lesser swamp warbler, ''Acrocephalus gracilirostris'' * Madagascar swamp warbler, ''Acrocephalus newtoni'' * Seychelles warbler, ''Acrocephalus sechellensis'' * Rodrigues warbler, ''Acrocephalus rodericanus'' * Great reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus arundinaceus'' * Oriental reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus orientalis'' * Clamorous reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus stentoreus'' *

Australian reed warbler The Australian reed warbler (''Acrocephalus australis'') is an Old World warbler in the genus ''Acrocephalus (bird), Acrocephalus'' and is the only ''Acrocephalus'' species native to Australia. It has also been observed in Papua New Guinea and ...

, ''Acrocephalus australis'' * Millerbird, ''Acrocephalus familiaris'' *† Nightingale reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus luscinius'' * Saipan reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus hiwae'' *† Aguiguan reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus nijoi'' *† Pagan reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus yamashinae'' *† Mangareva reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus astrolabii'' * Nauru reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus rehsei'' * Caroline reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus syrinx'' * Bokikokiko, ''Acrocephalus aequinoctialis'' * Northern Marquesan reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus percernis'' * Tahiti reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus caffer'' *† Moorea reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus longirostris'' *† Garrett's reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus musae'' * Southern Marquesan reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus mendanae'' * Tuamotu reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus atyphus'' * Cook reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus kerearako'' * Rimatara reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus rimitarae'' * Henderson reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus taiti'' * Pitcairn reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus vaughani'' * Black-browed reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus bistrigiceps'' *

Moustached warbler The moustached warbler (''Acrocephalus melanopogon'') is an Old World warbler in the genus '' Acrocephalus''. It breeds in southern Europe and southern temperate Asia with a few breeding in north-west Africa. It is partially migratory. South-wes ...

, ''Acrocephalus melanopogon'' * Aquatic warbler, ''Acrocephalus paludicola'' * Sedge warbler, ''Acrocephalus schoenobaenus'' * Speckled reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus sorghophilus'' * Blunt-winged warbler, ''Acrocephalus concinens'' * Manchurian reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus tangorum'' (sometimes included in ''A. agricola'') * Large-billed reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus orinus'' * Paddyfield warbler, ''Acrocephalus agricola'' * Blyth's reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus dumetorum'' * Common reed warbler, ''Acrocephalus scirpaceus'' * Marsh warbler, ''Acrocephalus palustris'' Fragmentary

fossil A fossil (from Classical Latin , ) is any preserved remains, impression, or trace of any once-living thing from a past geological age. Examples include bones, shells, exoskeletons, stone imprints of animals or microbes, objects preserve ...

remains from the

Late Miocene The Late Miocene (also known as Upper Miocene) is a sub-epoch of the Miocene epoch (geology), Epoch made up of two faunal stage, stages. The Tortonian and Messinian stages comprise the Late Miocene sub-epoch, which lasted from 11.63 Ma (million ye ...

(about 11 mya) of Rudabánya (NE

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

) show some

apomorph In phylogenetics, an apomorphy (or derived trait) is a novel character or character state that has evolved from its ancestral form (or plesiomorphy). A synapomorphy is an apomorphy shared by two or more taxa and is therefore hypothesized to ha ...

ies typical of this genus. Given its rather early age (most Passerida genera are not known until the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Acrocephalus videos
on the Internet Bird Collection {{Authority control Bird genera Taxa named by Johann Andreas Naumann Taxa named by Johann Friedrich Naumann