Bougainville thrush

The Bougainville thrush (Zoothera atrigena) is a species of bird in the thrush family Turdidae. It is found in the montane forests of Bougainville Island in the Solomon Islands Archipelago.

Bougainville thrush
Conservation status
Near Threatened  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Turdidae
Genus:	Zoothera
Species:	Z. atrigena
Binomial name
Zoothera atrigena Ripley & Hadden, 1982

It was formerly considered to be conspecific with the New Britain thrush with the combined taxa known as the black-backed thrush.

Taxonomy

The Bougainville thrush was formally described in 1982 by Dillon Ripley and Don Hadden from a specimen collected at an altitude of 1,500 m (4,900 ft) on Bougainville Island, Papua New Guinea. They considered it to be a subspecies of the black-backed thrush (now renamed the New Britain thrush) and coined the trinomial name Zoothera talaseae atrigena.^[2] The epithet atrigena combines Latin ater meaning "black" with gena meaning "cheek".^[3] The Bougainville thrush is now considered to be a separate species based on its distinctive morphology.^[4]