The yellow-mandibled sparrow (''Arremon axillaris'') is a species of bird in the family

Passerellidae New World sparrows are a group of mainly New World passerine birds, forming the family Passerellidae. They are seed-eating birds with conical bills, brown or gray in color, and many species have distinctive head patterns. Although they share th ...

. It is found in northeast Colombia and west Venezuela. Its natural

habitat In ecology, habitat refers to the array of resources, biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species' habitat can be seen as the physical manifestation of its ...

is subtropical or tropical moist lowland

forest A forest is an ecosystem characterized by a dense ecological community, community of trees. Hundreds of definitions of forest are used throughout the world, incorporating factors such as tree density, tree height, land use, legal standing, ...

s. It 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

pectoral sparrow The pectoral sparrow (''Arremon taciturnus'') is a species of bird in the family Passerellidae. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, French Guiana, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist l ...

Taxonomy

The yellow-mandibled sparrow 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 1854 by the English zoologist

Philip Sclater Philip Lutley Sclater (4 November 1829 – 27 June 1913) was an England, English lawyer and zoologist. In zoology, he was an expert ornithologist, and identified the main zoogeographic regions of the world. He was Secretary of the Zoological ...

under the current

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 ...

''Arremon axillaris''. He specified the type locality as "Nova Grenada", the former

Republic of New Granada The Republic of New Granada was a Centralism, centralist unitary republic consisting primarily of present-day Colombia and Panama with smaller portions of today's Costa Rica, Ecuador, Venezuela, Peru and Brazil that existed from 1831 to 1858. ...

which consisted primarily of present-day Colombia and Panama. The specific epithet ''axillaris'' is

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

meaning "of the armpit". The yellow-mandibled sparrow was formerly treated as a

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 ...

of the

(''Arremon taciturnus''). It is now considered to be a separate species based on a phylogenetic study published in 2022 as well as the difference in bill colour and vocalization.

Description

The yellow-mandibled sparrow is around in overall length and weighs . The male has a black head with a narrow white and a grey stripe along the center of the crown. The throat and sides of the neck are white. The wing-coverts are yellowish green with the rest of the upperparts greenish-olive. It is white below except for the two sections of the black pectoral band which is broken in the middle. The bill is bicolor with a black upper mandible and a yellow lower mandible. The female is similar to the male but is creamy white below is generally less brightly coloured. The yellow-mandibled sparrow differs from the pectoral sparrow in having a yellowish lower mandible and more extensive yellow shoulders patches.

Distribution and habitat

The species is found in Colombia on the eastern side of the Andes and north to western Venezuela. It occurs in the undergrowth of humid lowland forest.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q31874293 yellow-mandibled sparrow yellow-mandibled sparrow yellow-mandibled sparrow