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Thick-billed Fox-sparrow

Passerella megarhyncha

Classification

Class
Aves

The thick-billed fox sparrow (Passerella (iliaca) megarhyncha) group comprises the peculiarly large-billed Sierra Nevadan taxa in the genus Passerella. It is currently classified as a "subspecies group" within the fox sparrow, pending wider-spread acceptance of its species status. These birds were long considered members of the slate-colored fox sparrow group due to morphological characteristics (Swarth 1920), but according to mtDNA cytochrome b sequence and haplotype data (Zink 1994), it forms a recognizable clade.

Distribution

(c) David Anderson, some rights reserved (CC BY), uploaded by David Anderson · CC-BY
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Countries in the Picchu catalog
United States of America · 166