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The coal tit (''Periparus ater'') is a passerine bird in the tit family Paridae. It is a widespread and common resident breeder throughout temperate to subtropical Eurasia and northern Africa. The black-crested tit is now usually included in this species. ==Taxonomy and systematics== This species was first described by Linnaeus in his 1758 edition of ''Systema Naturae''. Linnaeus' primary reference was his earlier ''Fauna Svecica'', whose cumbersome pre-binomial name ''Parus capite nigro: vertice albo, dorso cinereo, pectore albo'' ("black-headed tit with white nape, ash-grey back, white breast") became the much simpler yet no less unequivocal ''Parus ater''. This name – meaning "dusky-black tit" – was simply adopted from older ornithological textbooks, ultimately going back to Conrad Gessner's 1555 ''Historiae animalium''. Linnaeus' description was essentially the slightly rephrased species name from ''Fauna Svecica'': ''P() capite nigro, dorso cinereo, occipite pectoreque albo.'' – "a black-headed tit, with ash-grey back, and white back of the head and breast." He gave no type locality except "Europe", but his original description refers to the population inhabiting Sweden (which is consequently included in the nominate subspecies today).〔Gessner (1555): pp.616, Linnaeus (1746, 1758)〕 Gessner also notes that the coal tit was known as ''Kohlmeiß'' in German – the literal equivalent of its English name, though in its modern orthography ''Kohlmeise'' it refers to the great tit (''Parus major''). That bird was in Gessner's day usually called ''Spiegelmeiß'' ("multicolored tit"〔Literally "mirror tit" (though its feathers are not iridescent), perhaps rather "wing-stripe tit", as in German ornithology ''Spiegel'' means a wing-stripe or -patch. The interpretation referring to its colorful plumage, though somewhat unusual, is the one given by Gesner however: ''a colorum pulchritudine quibus distinguitur'' – "for the beauty of its colors, which distinguish it"〕), ''Brandtmeiß'' ("burnt tit") or ''grosse Meiß'' ("great tit") in German. ''Kölmeyß'' was attested for ''P. major'' by William Turner, but Turner does not list ''P. ater'' at all, while Gessner notes that his hunters always used ''Kohlmeiß'' for the present species. However, this has since changed, and the modern German name of ''P. ater'' is ''Tannenmeise'' ("fir tit"), after a typical habitat. This name is attested (as ''Tannen-Maise'') by Johann Leonhard Frisch in the early 18th century already, who furthermore records that ''P. ater'' was also called ''Kleine Kohl-Maise'' ("small coal tit") whereas ''Kohl-Maise'' referred unequivocally to ''P. major''. Frisch collected his data in the Berlin region, where the German dialect was quite different from that spoken by Gessner's Alemannic sources 200 years earlier, and heavily influenced by Middle Low German – the language of the northern German sources of Turner. Regarding that, ''Tanne'' is derived from the Old Saxon ''danna'', and thus had spread through the German dialect continuum from north to south. 〔Turner (1544a,b), Gessner (1555): pp.615-616, Frisch (1720), Linnaeus (1758)〕 Most authorities still treat the coal tit in the subgenus ''Periparus'', but the American Ornithologists' Union considers ''Periparus'' a distinct genus. This is supported by mtDNA cytochrome ''b'' sequence analysis; ''Periparus'' seems to be closer to the ''Poecile'' tits and chickadees than to the great tit and its relatives. Thus, it belongs to the more advanced Paridae, in which the bright plumage of the more basal lineages is dulled down apomorphically.〔Gill ''et al.'' (2005)〕 In addition, the same data suggest that this species is paraphyletic in regard to the closely related and parapatric spot-winged tit (''P. melanolophus'') from South Asia, which looks like a slightly crested, darker version of ''P. ater''. Consequently, the spot-winged tit might have to be included in ''P. ater'', or some coal tits could be considered a distinct species. As occasional hybridization has been recorded between the two, mtDNA alone (which is inherited only from the mother) is insufficient to determine whether hybrid gene flow or another trivial cause (such as incomplete lineage sorting) obfuscates the actual relationships, or whether taxonomic rearrangement is indeed required. With the range of these titmice encircling the Himalayas, without further study it cannot even be excluded that they constitute a ring species – with gene flow occurring in Nepal but not in Afghanistan –, as has been shown for other passerines in the same region.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Coal tit」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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