Platysteira

Platysteira is a genus of birds in the wattle-eye family Platysteiridae that are found in tropical Africa.

Taxonomy

The genus Platysteira was introduced in 1830 by the English naturalists William Jardine and Prideaux John Selby. The name combines the Ancient Greek πλατυς/platus meaning "broad" with στειρα/steira meaning "ship's keel". Jardine and Selby did not specify a type species but in 1840 the English zoologist George Gray designated the type as Muscicapa melanoptera Gmelin, 1789. This is a junior synonym of Muscicapa cyanea, Müller, PLS, 1776, the brown-throated wattle-eye.

The genus contains the following eight species:

• Brown-throated wattle-eye, Platysteira cyanea – west and central Africa
• White-fronted wattle-eye, Platysteira albifrons – lowlands and escarpment of western Angola and adjacent southwestern Democratic Republic of the Congo
• Black-throated wattle-eye, Platysteira peltata – central, east and southeast Africa
• Banded wattle-eye, Platysteira laticincta – Bamenda Mountains (western Cameroon)
• Red-cheeked wattle-eye, Platysteira blissetti – humid forest of Guinea and southern Sierra Leone to southern Cameroon
• Black-necked wattle-eye, Platysteira chalybea – humid forest of southern Cameroon and Gabon; Bioko
• Jameson's wattle-eye, Platysteira jamesoni – eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, far southern South Sudan, Uganda, western Kenya, and far northwestern Tanzania
• Yellow-bellied wattle-eye, Platysteira concreta – west and central Africa

References