The Timor cicadabird (''Edolisoma timoriense'') is a

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 in the family Campephagidae that is found on the islands of

Lembata Lembata is an island in the Lesser Sunda Islands, also known as Lomblen or Kawela; it is the largest island of the Solor Archipelago, in the Lesser Sunda Islands, Indonesia. It forms a separate regency of the province of Nusa Tenggara Timur. Th ...

Alor Alor may refer to: South Asia *Aror or Alor, medieval name of city of Sukkur, Sindh, Pakistan *Alor, Bastar, a village in Bastar district, Chhattisgarh, India Southeast Asia * Alor Archipelago, Indonesia **Alor Island, Indonesia ** Alor Strai ...

and

Timor Timor (, , ) is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is Indonesia–Timor-Leste border, divided between the sovereign states of Timor-Leste in the eastern part and Indonesia in the ...

in Indonesia. The species 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 common cicadabird, now renamed the Sahul cicadabird.

Taxonomy

The Timor cicadabird 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 ...

in 1878 by English ornithologist

Richard Bowdler Sharpe Richard Bowdler Sharpe (22 November 1847 – 25 December 1909) was an English people, English zoologist and ornithology, ornithologist who worked as curator of the bird collection at the British Museum of natural history. In the course of his car ...

based on a specimen collected by

Adolf Bernhard Meyer Adolf Bernhard Meyer (11 October 1840, Hamburg – 22 August 1911, Dresden) was a German anthropologist, ornithologist, entomologist, and herpetologist. He served for nearly thirty years as director of the Königlich Zoologisches und Anthropologi ...

on the island of

, Indonesia. Sharpe coined 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 ...

''Edoliisoma timoriense''. The Timor cicadabird was formerly treated as

with the common cicadabird (now renamed the Sahul cicadabird) (''Edolisoma tenuirostre''). It has been elevated to species status based on the differences in morphology and a

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. Three

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: * ''E. t. kalaotuae''

Meise Meise () is a municipality in the province of Flemish Brabant, in the Flemish region of Belgium. The municipality comprises the towns of Meise proper and Wolvertem (a ''deelgemeente''), and several smaller villages like Sint-Brixius-Rode, Oppem, ...

, 1929 – Kalaotoa (southeast of south

Sulawesi Sulawesi ( ), also known as Celebes ( ), is an island in Indonesia. One of the four Greater Sunda Islands, and the List of islands by area, world's 11th-largest island, it is situated east of Borneo, west of the Maluku Islands, and south of Min ...

) * ''E. t. emancipatum'' Hartert, EJO, 1896 – Tanah Jampea (south of southwest

) * ''E. t. timoriense'' Sharpe, 1878 –

Alor Island Alor () is the largest island in the Alor Archipelago and is one of the 92 officially listed outlying islands of Indonesia. It is located at the eastern end of the Lesser Sunda Islands chain that runs through southeastern Indonesia, which fr ...

and

(central, east

Lesser Sunda Islands The Lesser Sunda Islands (, , ), now known as Nusa Tenggara Islands (, or "Southeast Islands"), are an archipelago in the Indonesian archipelago. Most of the Lesser Sunda Islands are located within the Wallacea region, except for the Bali pro ...

)

References

Timor cicadabird Timor cicadabird Taxa named by Richard Bowdler Sharpe Birds of Indonesia {{Campephagidae-stub