Plateau lark

The plateau lark (Corypha nigrescens) is a species of lark in the family Alaudidae found in east Zambia, north Malawi and south Tanzania. It was formerly treated as a subspecies of the rufous-naped lark.

Plateau lark
In Kitulo National Park, Tanzania
Conservation status
Not evaluated (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Alaudidae
Genus:	Corypha
Species:	C. nigrescens
Binomial name
Corypha nigrescens (Reichenow, 1900)

Taxonomy

The plateau lark was formally described in 1900 by the German ornithologist Anton Reichenow based on a specimen collected in Tanzania north of Lake Malawi on the Kitulo Plateau. He considered it to be a subspecies of the rufous-naped lark and coined the trinomial name Mirafra africana nigrescens.^[1] The specific epithet is from Latin nigrescens, nigrescentis meaning "blackish".^[2] The plateau lark is now treated as a separate species and placed in the genus Corypha. This is based on the results of two molecular phylogenetic studies by a group of ornithologists led by Per Alström that were published in 2023 and 2024.^[3][4][5]

Two subspecies are recognised:^[5]

• C. n. nigrescens (Reichenow, 1900) – northeast Zambia and south Tanzania
• C. n. nyikae (Benson, 1939) – east Zambia, north Malawi and southwest Tanzania