Mimid
Encyclopedia
The mimids are the New World
family of passerine birds, Mimidae, that includes thrasher
s, mockingbird
s, trembler
s, and the New World catbirds. As their name (Latin
for "mimic") suggests, these bird
s are notable for their vocalization, especially some species' remarkable ability to mimic a wide variety of birds and other sounds heard outdoors.
of mimids in two larger and some 10 small or monotypic
genera
. They tend towards dull grays and browns in their appearance, though a few are black or blue-gray, and many have red, yellow, or white irises
. They range from 20 to 33 centimetres in length, and 36 to 56 grams in weight. Many mimids have a rather thrush
-like pattern: brown above, pale with dark streaks or spots below. They tend to have longer tails than thrushes (or the bigger wren
s, which they also resemble) and longer bills that in many species curve downward (Clement & Perrins 2003).
They have long, strong legs (for passerines) with which many species hop through undergrowth searching for arthropod
s and fruits to eat. Their habitat varies from forest undergrowth to scrub, high-altitude grasslands, and deserts. The two trembler
s live in the atypical habitat of rain forests in the Lesser Antilles
, and the Brown Trembler
has the particularly atypical behavior of foraging while clinging to tree trunks (Clement & Perrins 2003).
All known species build somewhat messy, bulky twig nests in dense growth, in most species on the ground or no more than 2 meters up. They usually lay 2 to 5 eggs that hatch in 12 or 13 days, which is also the length of time the chicks stay in the nest. Breeding usually starts in the spring or early in the rainy season, and many species can have two or even three broods per year. Most failures to fledge young are due to predation. Pairs often stay together for more than one breeding season (Clement & Perrins 2003).
in inspiring Darwin's
work on his theory of evolution (Curry 2003).
s (Sibley & Monroe 1990, Zuccon et al. 2006). These and oxpecker
s (and the Philippine creeper
s if they are not outright but highly apomorphic starlings) form a group of Muscicapoidea which originated probably in the Early Miocene
- very roughly 25-20 mya - somewhere in East Asia
(Zuccon et al. 2006). This is evidenced by the Asian-SW Pacific distribution of the most basal starlings (and Philippine creepers) and the North American range of the basal mimids.
They are sometimes united with the starlings in the Sturnidae as a tribe
Mimini as proposed by Sibley & Monroe (1990). This makes the expanded Stunidae a rather noninformative group and is probably due to the methodological drawbacks of their DNA-DNA hybridization technique.
, while the two other groups and the remaining thrashers seem to form the another, but the basal
branching pattern is not well resolved. The tremblers, again, are a monophyletic lineage. The latter, however, are embedded in a paraphyletic catbird-Caribbean
thrasher assemblage which consists of many rather basal lineages.(Hunt et al. 2001, Barber et al. 2004)
For detailed information on the evolution
ary relationships of the different mimid lineages, see their articles.
Mockingbird
s:
New World catbirds:
Thrasher
s:
Trembler
s
New World
The New World is one of the names used for the Western Hemisphere, specifically America and sometimes Oceania . The term originated in the late 15th century, when America had been recently discovered by European explorers, expanding the geographical horizon of the people of the European middle...
family of passerine birds, Mimidae, that includes thrasher
Thrasher
Thrashers are a New World group of passerine birds related to mockingbirds and New World catbirds. Like these, they are in the Mimidae family. There are 15 species in one large and 4 monotypic genera.These do not form a clade but are a phenetic assemblage...
s, mockingbird
Mockingbird
Mockingbirds are a group of New World passerine birds from the Mimidae family. They are best known for the habit of some species mimicking the songs of other birds and the sounds of insects and amphibians, often loudly and in rapid succession. There are about 17 species in three genera...
s, trembler
Trembler
Tremblers are a New World group of passerine birds related to mockingbirds and New World catbirds. Like these, they are in the Mimidae family. There are 2-4 species in one genus, Cinclocerthia:...
s, and the New World catbirds. As their name (Latin
Latin
Latin is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. It, along with most European languages, is a descendant of the ancient Proto-Indo-European language. Although it is considered a dead language, a number of scholars and members of the Christian clergy speak it fluently, and...
for "mimic") suggests, these bird
Bird
Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...
s are notable for their vocalization, especially some species' remarkable ability to mimic a wide variety of birds and other sounds heard outdoors.
Description
There are over 30 speciesSpecies
In biology, a species is one of the basic units of biological classification and a taxonomic rank. A species is often defined as a group of organisms capable of interbreeding and producing fertile offspring. While in many cases this definition is adequate, more precise or differing measures are...
of mimids in two larger and some 10 small or monotypic
Monotypic
In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group with only one biological type. The term's usage differs slightly between botany and zoology. The term monotypic has a separate use in conservation biology, monotypic habitat, regarding species habitat conversion eliminating biodiversity and...
genera
Genus
In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...
. They tend towards dull grays and browns in their appearance, though a few are black or blue-gray, and many have red, yellow, or white irises
Iris (anatomy)
The iris is a thin, circular structure in the eye, responsible for controlling the diameter and size of the pupils and thus the amount of light reaching the retina. "Eye color" is the color of the iris, which can be green, blue, or brown. In some cases it can be hazel , grey, violet, or even pink...
. They range from 20 to 33 centimetres in length, and 36 to 56 grams in weight. Many mimids have a rather thrush
Thrush (bird)
The thrushes, family Turdidae, are a group of passerine birds that occur worldwide.-Characteristics:Thrushes are plump, soft-plumaged, small to medium-sized birds, inhabiting wooded areas, and often feed on the ground or eat small fruit. The smallest thrush may be the Forest Rock-thrush, at and...
-like pattern: brown above, pale with dark streaks or spots below. They tend to have longer tails than thrushes (or the bigger wren
Wren
The wrens are passerine birds in the mainly New World family Troglodytidae. There are approximately 80 species of true wrens in approximately 20 genera....
s, which they also resemble) and longer bills that in many species curve downward (Clement & Perrins 2003).
They have long, strong legs (for passerines) with which many species hop through undergrowth searching for arthropod
Arthropod
An arthropod is an invertebrate animal having an exoskeleton , a segmented body, and jointed appendages. Arthropods are members of the phylum Arthropoda , and include the insects, arachnids, crustaceans, and others...
s and fruits to eat. Their habitat varies from forest undergrowth to scrub, high-altitude grasslands, and deserts. The two trembler
Trembler
Tremblers are a New World group of passerine birds related to mockingbirds and New World catbirds. Like these, they are in the Mimidae family. There are 2-4 species in one genus, Cinclocerthia:...
s live in the atypical habitat of rain forests in the Lesser Antilles
Lesser Antilles
The Lesser Antilles are a long, partly volcanic island arc in the Western Hemisphere. Most of its islands form the eastern boundary of the Caribbean Sea with the Atlantic Ocean, with the remainder located in the southern Caribbean just north of South America...
, and the Brown Trembler
Brown Trembler
The Brown Trembler is a species of bird in the Mimidae family. Northern birds from Guadeloupe northwards may represent a separate species from those on Dominica and St. Vincent....
has the particularly atypical behavior of foraging while clinging to tree trunks (Clement & Perrins 2003).
All known species build somewhat messy, bulky twig nests in dense growth, in most species on the ground or no more than 2 meters up. They usually lay 2 to 5 eggs that hatch in 12 or 13 days, which is also the length of time the chicks stay in the nest. Breeding usually starts in the spring or early in the rainy season, and many species can have two or even three broods per year. Most failures to fledge young are due to predation. Pairs often stay together for more than one breeding season (Clement & Perrins 2003).
In the history of science
Contrary to often-held belief, the Nesomimus mockingbirds may have played at least as great a role as Darwin's finchesDarwin's finches
Darwin's finches are a group of 14 or 15 species of passerine birds. It is still not clear which bird family they belong to, but they are not related to the true finches. They were first collected by Charles Darwin on the Galápagos Islands during the second voyage of the Beagle...
in inspiring Darwin's
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
work on his theory of evolution (Curry 2003).
Outside the family
Phylogenetic analyses have shown that mimids are most closely related to starlingStarling
Starlings are small to medium-sized passerine birds in the family Sturnidae. The name "Sturnidae" comes from the Latin word for starling, sturnus. Many Asian species, particularly the larger ones, are called mynas, and many African species are known as glossy starlings because of their iridescent...
s (Sibley & Monroe 1990, Zuccon et al. 2006). These and oxpecker
Oxpecker
The oxpeckers are two species of bird which make up the family Buphagidae. Some ornithologists regard them as a subfamily Buphaginae within the starling family Sturnidae but they appear to be quite distinct. Oxpeckers are endemic to the savanna of Sub-Saharan Africa...
s (and the Philippine creeper
Philippine creeper
The Philippine creepers or rhabdornises are small passerine birds. They are endemic to the Philippines. The group contains a single genus Rhabdornis with three species...
s if they are not outright but highly apomorphic starlings) form a group of Muscicapoidea which originated probably in the Early Miocene
Early Miocene
The Early Miocene is a sub-epoch of the Miocene Epoch made up of two stages: the Aquitanian and Burdigalian stages....
- very roughly 25-20 mya - somewhere in East Asia
East Asia
East Asia or Eastern Asia is a subregion of Asia that can be defined in either geographical or cultural terms...
(Zuccon et al. 2006). This is evidenced by the Asian-SW Pacific distribution of the most basal starlings (and Philippine creepers) and the North American range of the basal mimids.
They are sometimes united with the starlings in the Sturnidae as a tribe
Tribe (biology)
In biology, a tribe is a taxonomic rank between family and genus. It is sometimes subdivided into subtribes.Some examples include the tribes: Canini, Acalypheae, Hominini, Bombini, and Antidesmeae.-See also:* Biological classification* Rank...
Mimini as proposed by Sibley & Monroe (1990). This makes the expanded Stunidae a rather noninformative group and is probably due to the methodological drawbacks of their DNA-DNA hybridization technique.
Within the family
The mockingbirds with some thrashers seem to form one major cladeClade
A clade is a group consisting of a species and all its descendants. In the terms of biological systematics, a clade is a single "branch" on the "tree of life". The idea that such a "natural group" of organisms should be grouped together and given a taxonomic name is central to biological...
, while the two other groups and the remaining thrashers seem to form the another, but the basal
Basal (phylogenetics)
In phylogenetics, a basal clade is the earliest clade to branch in a larger clade; it appears at the base of a cladogram.A basal group forms an outgroup to the rest of the clade, such as in the following example:...
branching pattern is not well resolved. The tremblers, again, are a monophyletic lineage. The latter, however, are embedded in a paraphyletic catbird-Caribbean
Caribbean
The Caribbean is a crescent-shaped group of islands more than 2,000 miles long separating the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, to the west and south, from the Atlantic Ocean, to the east and north...
thrasher assemblage which consists of many rather basal lineages.(Hunt et al. 2001, Barber et al. 2004)
For detailed information on the evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
ary relationships of the different mimid lineages, see their articles.
Mockingbird
Mockingbird
Mockingbirds are a group of New World passerine birds from the Mimidae family. They are best known for the habit of some species mimicking the songs of other birds and the sounds of insects and amphibians, often loudly and in rapid succession. There are about 17 species in three genera...
s:
- Genus MimusMimusMimus is a bird genus in the family Mimidae. It contains the typical mockingbirds. In 2007, the genus Nesomimus was merged into Mimus by the American Ornithologists' Union.The following species are placed here:...
- typical mockingbirds (some 10 species, includes Mimodes) - The former genus Nesomimus, now part of Mimus - mockingbirds of the Galápagos IslandsGalápagos IslandsThe Galápagos Islands are an archipelago of volcanic islands distributed around the equator in the Pacific Ocean, west of continental Ecuador, of which they are a part.The Galápagos Islands and its surrounding waters form an Ecuadorian province, a national park, and a...
(4 species) - Genus MelanotisMelanotisMelanotis is a genus of bird in the Mimidae family.It contains the following species:* Blue Mockingbird * Blue-and-white Mockingbird -Taxonomy:...
- blue mockingbirds (2 species)
New World catbirds:
- Genus Dumetella - Gray Catbird
- Genus Melanoptila - Black Catbird
Thrasher
Thrasher
Thrashers are a New World group of passerine birds related to mockingbirds and New World catbirds. Like these, they are in the Mimidae family. There are 15 species in one large and 4 monotypic genera.These do not form a clade but are a phenetic assemblage...
s:
- Genus Oreoscoptes - Sage Thrasher
- Genus ToxostomaToxostomaToxostoma is a genus of bird in the Mimidae family. All members of this genus are called thrashers but there are other birds in the Mimidae family also bearing this title...
- typical thrashers (11 species) - Genus Ramphocinclus - White-breasted Thrasher
- Genus Allenia - Scaly-breasted Thrasher (formerly in Margarops)
- Genus Margarops - Pearly-eyed Thrasher
Trembler
Trembler
Tremblers are a New World group of passerine birds related to mockingbirds and New World catbirds. Like these, they are in the Mimidae family. There are 2-4 species in one genus, Cinclocerthia:...
s
- Genus Cinclocerthia (2 species)
External links
- Mimid videos on the Internet Bird Collection