Brown-chested alethe

The brown-chested alethe (Chamaetylas poliocephala) is a species of bird in the Old World flycatcher family Muscicapidae. It has a discontinuous range of presence across the African tropical rainforest.

Brown-chested alethe
C. p. carruthersi in Kakamega Forest
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Muscicapidae
Genus:	Chamaetylas
Species:	C. poliocephala
Binomial name
Chamaetylas poliocephala (Bonaparte, 1850)
Synonyms
Pseudalethe poliocephala Bonaparte, 1850 Alethe poliocephala (Bonaparte, 1850)

Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest.

Taxonomy

The brown-chested alethe was formally described in 1850 by the French naturalist Charles Lucien Bonaparte based on a manuscript by Coenraad Temminck. Bonaparte gave the binomial name as Trichophorus (Griniger) and the locality as Africa. The locality has been restricted to the island of Bioko (formally Fernando Po).^[2][3] The specific epithet combines the Ancient Greek polios meaning "grey" with -kephalos meaning "-headed".^[4] The brown-chested alethe is now one of four species placed in the genus Chamaetylas that was introduced in 1860 by Ferdinand Heine.^[5]

Nine subspecies are recognised:^[5]

• C. p. poliocephala (Bonaparte, 1850) – Sierra Leone to Ghana
• C. p. compsonota (Cassin, 1859) – south Nigeria to southwest Central African Republic, northwest Angola and Bioko
• C. p. hallae (Traylor, 1961) – west Angola
• C. p. giloensis (Cunningham-Van Someren & Schifter, 1981) – south Sudan
• C. p. carruthersi (Ogilvie-Grant, 1906) – southeast Central African Republic, northeast DR Congo, Uganda and west Kenya
• C. p. akeleyae (Dearborn, 1909) – central Kenya
• C. p. vandeweghei (Prigogine, 1984) – Rwanda and Burundi
• C. p. kungwensis (Moreau, 1941) – west Tanzania
• C. p. ufipae (Moreau, 1942) – southeast DR Congo and southwest Tanzania