Order
Passeriformes
Family
Furnariidae
Genus
Upucerthia
 
Neotropical Birds logo
Version 1.0

This is a historic version of this account.  Current version

SPECIES

White-throated Earthcreeper Upucerthia albigula

Thomas S. Schulenberg
Version: 1.0 — Published March 18, 2010

Systematics

Geographic Variation

Monotypic; no described geographic variation.

Subspecies

Related Species

The White-throated Earthcreeper is very similar to Plain-breasted Earthcreeper Upucerthia jelskii, and the two species often have been assumed to be closely related (e.g., Vaurie 1980, Remsen 2003).

Chesser et al. (2007) reconstructed the phylogeny of earthcreepers and related genera, using both nuclear (intron 7 of β-fibrinogen, FGB-I7) and mitochondrial genes (complete sequences for ND3 and COII) across all  nine species formerly included in Upucerthia, as well as representatives of all other genera of the subfamily Furnariinae. Upucerthia, as then constituted, was shown to be highly polyphyletic. White-throated Earthcreeper belonged to the "core" or true Upucerthia, which also included Plain-breasted Earthcreeper Upucerthia jelskii, Buff-breasted Earthcreeper Upucerthia validirostris, and Scale-throated Earthcreeper Upucerthia dumetaria. Furthermore, most analyses indicated that dumetaria was sister to albigula, not jelskii or jelskii + validirostris.

Recommended Citation

Schulenberg, T. S. (2010). White-throated Earthcreeper (Upucerthia albigula), version 1.0. In Neotropical Birds Online (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/nb.whtear1.01