by Chestnut-bellied A species of bird belonging to the Sturnidae family is the starling (Lamprotornis puncher). Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, Sudan, Togo, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Chad, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, and Togo are among the countries where it is present.
A species of starling belonging to the Sturnidae family is the chestnut-tailed starling, often known as the grey-headed myna. In India and Southeast Asia, it is a species that is either a permanent resident or only sometimes migrates. The distribution of a former subspecies in the Malabar region inspired the name of the species.
The Malabar starling (Sturnia blythii), which belongs to this resident population and has a white head, is frequently considered a complete species.In the past, this species was variously assigned to the genera Sturnia, Sturnus, and Temenuchus due to the previous starling genera’ lack of monophyly (Zuccon et al., 2006), and studies have suggested that this clade’s members could still go by the name Temenuchus.
Placement in the genus Sturnia has been advocated by further investigations.There are some movements that neither the nominate subspecies nor nemoricola are known to conduct (for instance, Sturnia malabarica malabarica has been observed in Pakistan and central and southern India).In place of being considered a subspecies of Sturnia malabarica, the taxon blythii is now typically regarded as a legitimate species,
the Malabar white-headed starling or white-headed myna (Rasmussen & Anderton, 2005). The two are not known to interbreed since S. m. malabarica only travels to the blythii’s range during the winter, when breeding is not possible. However, a molecular analysis indicated that the genetic difference between S. malabarica blythii and its sisters, S. malabarica malabarica of northern India and S. malabarica nemoricola of Burma and Vietnam, was not statistically different (between 0.2% and 0.8%).
