Cattle tyrant

Cattle tyrant
In Venezuela
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Tyrannidae
Genus: Machetornis
G.R. Gray, 1841
Species: M. rixosa
Binomial name
Machetornis rixosa
(Vieillot, 1819)
Synonyms

Machetornis rixosus (Vieillot, 1819) [2]

The cattle tyrant (Machetornis rixosa) is a species of bird in the family Tyrannidae. It is the only member of the genus Machetornis.

It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela.

Habitat

Its natural habitats are pastureland and heavily degraded former forest. Due to deforestation, the species has recently colonized areas where it was previously absent, such as northeast Ecuador.

Cattle tyrants feed on parasitic arthropods on mammals, an example of a cleaning symbiosis.

Cleaning symbiosis: cattle tyrant feeding on parasites of a capybara

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Machetornis rixosa.
  1. BirdLife International (2012). "Machetornis rixosa". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. Version 2013.2. International Union for Conservation of Nature. Retrieved 26 November 2013.
  2. Alan P. Peterson, M.D. "Machetornis rixosus". Integrated Taxonomic Information System. Retrieved 22 July 2011.


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the 11/9/2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.