The Western Canary Islands Chiffchaff (Phylloscopus canariensis canariensis) is a small bird in the family Phylloscopidae

Phylloscopidae

Phylloscopidae is a newly described family of small insectivorous birds formerly placed in the Old World warbler family. Its members occur in Eurasia, ranging into Wallacea and Africa...

. It is a subspecies

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 of the Canary Islands Chiffchaff

Canary Islands Chiffchaff

The Canary Islands Chiffchaff is a species of leaf warbler endemic to the Canary Islands, Spain. Sometimes the English name is spelled Canary Island Chiffchaff .- Taxonomy :...

 found on the islands of El Hierro

El Hierro

El Hierro, nicknamed Isla del Meridiano , is the smallest and farthest south and west of the Canary Islands , in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa, with a population of 10,162 .- Name :The name El Hierro, although phonetically identical to the Spanish word for 'iron', is generally thought...

, La Palma

La Palma

La Palma is the most north-westerly of the Canary Islands. La Palma has an area of 706 km2 making it the fifth largest of the seven main Canary Islands...

, La Gomera

La Gomera

La Gomera is one of Spain's Canary Islands, located in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Africa. In area, it is the second-smallest of the seven main islands of this group.- Political organization :...

, Tenerife

Tenerife

Tenerife is the largest and most populous island of the seven Canary Islands, it is also the most populated island of Spain, with a land area of 2,034.38 km² and 906,854 inhabitants, 43% of the total population of the Canary Islands. About five million tourists visit Tenerife each year, the...

 and Gran Canaria

Gran Canaria

Gran Canaria is the second most populous island of the Canary Islands, with a population of 838,397 which constitutes approximately 40% of the population of the archipelago...

 in the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

, Spain

Spain

Spain , officially the Kingdom of Spain languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Spain's official name is as follows:;;;;;;), is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula...

.

Both the western and the now extinct eastern (Phylloscopus canariensis exsul

Eastern Canary Islands Chiffchaff

The Eastern Canary Islands Chiffchaff or Lanzarote Island Chiffchaff was a subspecies of the Canary Islands Chiffchaff endemic to the island of Lanzarote - and possibly also Fuerteventura - in the Canary Islands, Spain....

) subspecies of the Canary Islands Chiffchaff were formerly considered subspecies of the Common Chiffchaff but were separated (Clement & Helbig, 1998; Sangster et al., 2001) due to their morphological

Morphology (biology)

In biology, morphology is a branch of bioscience dealing with the study of the form and structure of organisms and their specific structural features....

, bioacoustical

Bioacoustics

Bioacoustics is a cross-disciplinary science that combines biology and acoustics. Usually it refers to the investigation of sound production, dispersion through elastic media, and reception in animals, including humans. This involves neurophysiological and anatomical basis of sound production and...

, and mtDNA sequence

DNA sequence

The sequence or primary structure of a nucleic acid is the composition of atoms that make up the nucleic acid and the chemical bonds that bond those atoms. Because nucleic acids, such as DNA and RNA, are unbranched polymers, this specification is equivalent to specifying the sequence of...

differences (Helbig et al., 1996).