Checkered woodpecker

The checkered woodpecker was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Buenos Aires, Argentina.^[4] The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text.^[5] Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Picus mixtus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées.^[6]

The checkered woodpecker was at one time placed in genus Dyctiopicus, which was merged into Dendrocopos, which in turn was merged into Picoides where it and its sister species the striped woodpecker (V. lignarius) were considered outliers. In 2006, Moore et al. published research on mtDNA COI and Cyt b sequences which suggested that the two belong in genus Veniliornis.^[7] That treatment is now (2023) followed by the International Ornithological Committee and BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World.^[3][8] However, starting in 2018, the American Ornithological Society and the Clements taxonomy moved all species of genus Veniliornis into genus Dryobates.^[9][2][10] In addition, there have been suggestions that the striped and checkered woodpeckers are conspecific.^[11]

The genus Veniliornis was introduced by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1854.^[12] The generic name combines the name of the Roman deity Venilia with the Ancient Greek word ornis meaning "bird". The specific epithet mixtus is the Latin word for "mixed" or "jumbled".^[13]

The above taxonomic systems recognize four subspecies:^{[3][2][10][8]}

• V. m. cancellatus (Wagler, 1829)
• V. m. mixtus (Boddaert, 1783)
• V. m. malleator (Wetmore, 1922)
• V. m. berlepschi (Hellmayr, 1915)

Subspecies V. m. cancellatus was at one time treated as a separate species.^[2]

Discover more about Taxonomy and systematics related topics

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was a French naturalist, mathematician, and cosmologist. He held the position of intendant (director) at the Jardin du Roi, now called the Jardin des Plantes.

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires, officially the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires, is the capital and primate city of Argentina. The city is located on the western shore of the Río de la Plata, on South America's southeastern coast. "Buenos Aires" can be translated as "fair winds" or "good airs", but the former was the meaning intended by the founders in the 16th century, by the use of the original name "Real de Nuestra Señora Santa María del Buen Ayre", named after the Madonna of Bonaria in Sardinia, Italy. Buenos Aires is classified as an alpha global city, according to the Globalization and World Cities Research Network (GaWC) 2020 ranking.

François-Nicolas Martinet

François-Nicolas Martinet

François-Nicolas Martinet was a French engineer, engraver and naturalist.

Edme-Louis Daubenton

Edme-Louis Daubenton

Edme-Louis Daubenton was a French naturalist.

Pieter Boddaert

Pieter Boddaert

Pieter Boddaert was a Dutch physician and naturalist.

Genus

Genus

Genus is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus.E.g. Panthera leo (lion) and Panthera onca (jaguar) are two species within the genus Panthera. Panthera is a genus within the family Felidae.

Picoides

Picoides

Picoides is a genus of woodpeckers that are native to Eurasia and North America, commonly known as three-toed woodpeckers.

Cytochrome c oxidase

Cytochrome c oxidase

The enzyme cytochrome c oxidase or Complex IV, is a large transmembrane protein complex found in bacteria, archaea, and mitochondria of eukaryotes.

BirdLife International

BirdLife International

BirdLife International is a global partnership of non-governmental organizations that strives to conserve birds and their habitats. BirdLife International's priorities include preventing extinction of bird species, identifying and safeguarding important sites for birds, maintaining and restoring key bird habitats, and empowering conservationists worldwide.

Handbook of the Birds of the World

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. The series was edited by Josep del Hoyo, Andrew Elliott, Jordi Sargatal and David A. Christie.

American Ornithological Society

American Ornithological Society

The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its members are primarily professional ornithologists, although membership is open to anyone with an interest in birds. The society publishes the two scholarly journals, The Auk and The Condor as well as the AOS Checklist of North American Birds.

Dryobates

Dryobates

Dryobates is a genus of birds in the woodpecker family Picidae. The species are widely distributed and occur in both Eurasia and the Americas.

The checkered woodpecker is about 14 cm (5.5 in) long and weighs 30 to 37 g (1.1 to 1.3 oz). Males and females have the same plumage except on their heads. Adults of both sexes of the nominate subspecies V. m. mixtus have a blackish-brown forehead and crown, a blackish-brown hindneck, and a generally white face with a dark brown stripe back from the eye and a thin dark brown malar stripe. Males have some white or buffish white streaks on the crown and a red or orange-red nape. The female's nape is black where the male's is red and its crown is solid black. Both sexes' upperparts are blackish-brown, with whitish or brownish-white bars. Their flight feathers are deep brown with white bars. Their tail is brownish-black with narrow white bars. Their underparts are white with a yellow or buff tinge, and dark brown streaks on the breast and belly, brown bars on the flanks, and thin brown streaks on the undertail coverts. Juveniles are duller and darker than adults, with broken bars on their upperparts and heavy streaks and bars on their dull white underparts. Both sexes have red on the crown (not the nape), though the female's patch is smaller.^[11]

Subspecies V. m. berlepschi is similar to the nominate, but its brown parts are somewhat darker, the patch behind the eye is larger, and its underparts are a purer white. V. m. malleator is similar to berlepschi but with heavier streaking on the underparts. V. m. cancellatus is distinctive. It is much browner than the nominate, especially where the nominate is black like on the crown. The white bars on its upperparts are much wider than the brown ones and its underparts have much more white with fewer and smaller streaks than the nominate's. The subspecies intergrade; "malleator and berlepschi may be more appropriately lumped into [the] nominate."^[11]

The subspecies of checkered woodpecker are found thus:^[3][11]

• V. m. cancellatus (Wagler, 1829), from extreme eastern Bolivia into eastern and southern Brazil.
• V. m. mixtus (Boddaert, 1783), eastern Argentina, extreme southeastern Brazil, and western Uruguay
• V. m. malleator (Wetmore, 1922), the Chaco Basin of southeastern Bolivia, western Paraguay, and northern Argentina
• V. m. berlepschi (Hellmayr, 1915), central and eastern Argentina

The checkered woodpecker primarily inhabits humid open woodlands and gallery forest, but also occurs in savanna and cerrado woodlands. Subspecies V. m. berlepschi inhabits arid bushlands characterized by Prosopis mesquite. In elevation the species ranges from near sea level to about 600 m (2,000 ft).^[11]

Subspecific differences run contrary to Gloger's rule.^[14] V. m. malleator and V. m. berlepschi, which inhabit more arid habitat, have darker and more prominent underside patterning, whereas the other two subspecies which are birds of mesic or riparian woodland are paler overall.^[11]

Discover more about Distribution and habitat related topics

Johann Georg Wagler

Johann Georg Wagler

Johann Georg Wagler was a German herpetologist and ornithologist.

Pieter Boddaert

Pieter Boddaert

Pieter Boddaert was a Dutch physician and naturalist.

Alexander Wetmore

Alexander Wetmore

Frank Alexander Wetmore was an American ornithologist and avian paleontologist. He was the sixth Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution.

Chaco Basin

Chaco Basin

The Chaco Basin is a major sedimentary basin in Central South America around the borders of Argentina, Bolivia and Paraguay. The basin forms part of the larger Paraná Basin. Superficially, the Chaco Basin is an alluvial basin composed of land-derived material, mostly fine sand and clays of Paleogene, Neogene and Quaternary age. On deeper levels the Paraguayan Chaco is made up by four sub-basins, the Pirizal, Pilar, Carandaity and Curupaity basins.

Carl Eduard Hellmayr

Carl Eduard Hellmayr

Carl Eduard Hellmayr was an Austrian ornithologist.

Gallery forest

Gallery forest

A gallery forest is one formed as a corridor along rivers or wetlands, projecting into landscapes that are otherwise only sparsely treed such as savannas, grasslands, or deserts. The gallery forest maintains a more temperate microclimate above the river. Defined as long and narrow forest vegetation associated with rivers, gallery forests are structurally and floristically heterogeneous.

Cerrado

Cerrado

The Cerrado is a vast ecoregion of tropical savanna in eastern Brazil, particularly in the states of Goiás, Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, Tocantins, Maranhão, Minas Gerais, and the Federal District. The core areas of the Cerrado biome are the Brazilian highlands – the Planalto. The main habitat types of the Cerrado consist of forest savanna, wooded savanna, park savanna and gramineous-woody savanna. The Cerrado also includes savanna wetlands and gallery forests. The second largest of Brazil's major habitat types, after the Amazonian rainforest, the Cerrado accounts for a full 21 percent of the country's land area.

Prosopis

Prosopis

Prosopis is a genus of flowering plants in the family Fabaceae. It contains around 45 species of spiny trees and shrubs found in subtropical and tropical regions of the Americas, Africa, Western Asia, and South Asia. They often thrive in arid soil and are resistant to drought, on occasion developing extremely deep root systems. Their wood is usually hard, dense and durable. Their fruits are pods and may contain large amounts of sugar. The generic name means "burdock" in late Latin and originated in the Greek language.

Gloger's rule

Gloger's rule

Gloger's rule is an ecogeographical rule which states that within a species of endotherms, more heavily pigmented forms tend to be found in more humid environments, e.g. near the equator. It was named after the zoologist Constantin Wilhelm Lambert Gloger, who first remarked upon this phenomenon in 1833 in a review of covariation of climate and avian plumage color. Erwin Stresemann later noted that the idea had been expressed even earlier by Peter Simon Pallas in Zoographia Rosso-Asiatica (1811). Gloger found that birds in more humid habitats tended to be darker than their relatives from regions with higher aridity. Over 90% of 52 North American bird species studies conform to this rule.

Mesic habitat

Mesic habitat

In ecology, a mesic habitat is a type of habitat with a moderate or well-balanced supply of moisture, e.g., a mesic forest, a temperate hardwood forest, or dry-mesic prairie. Mesic is one of a triad of terms used to describe the amount of water in a habitat. The others are xeric and hydric.

Movement

Checkered woodpeckers in parts of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso are there only between January and May, but nothing else is known about their movements or those of other populations.^[11]

Feeding

Checkered woodpeckers forage singly and in pairs, usually on small branches of bushes and trees. They mostly find their diet of insects and seeds by gleaning and probing.^[11]

Breeding

The checkered woodpecker's breeding season is from September to November. Both sexes excavate the nest hole, typically 3 to 6 m (10 to 20 ft) above ground in a tree or palm. The clutch size is four eggs. The incubation period, time to fledging, and details of parental care are not known.^[11]

Vocal and non-vocal sounds

The checkered woodpecker makes a "peek" and a "we-we-we..."; it trills "ti-ti-ti-ti-ti..." for long-distance contact. It also drums.^[11]

The IUCN has assesed the checkered woodpecker as being of Least Concern. It has a very large range, and though its population size is not known it is believed to be stable. No immediate threats have been identified.^[1] It occurs in several protected areas and is "[p]robably quite common, but appears to be very local, for reasons not understood."^[11]