Parus venustulus

Eck, Siegfried, 2006, The Palaearctic Titmouse Species (Aves: Paridae: Parus sensu lato) — A current survey *, Zootaxa 1325, pp. 7-54 : 25

1. Parus venustulus

Parkes (1958: 96) placed the Yellow­bellied Tit P. venustulus with P. amabilis and P. elegans in a superspecies, probably correctly. Löhrl (1987, 1988) examined the ethology of the Yellow­bellied Tit in detail, compared it with other species and found interesting similarities to Coal Tits and Sylviparus modestus .

Parus venustulus SWINHOE, 1870 [Yangtze gorges].

The population group: P 14 venustulus ; China. — Figs. Berezowski & Bianchi 1891: Plate II: 3; Quinn: Plate 18: 65.

* Pronounced sexual dimorphism in plumage coloration; for moult and plumages see Löhrl (1988) and Harrap and Quinn (1996: 311). — Extremely short­tailed, TWI of n=12: x = 54.6 % ± 1.65, WTI (n=13): x = 23.7 % ± 1.42. The extremely large P. amabilis , allospecies on Balabac, Calauit and Palawan, is relatively long­tailed (TWI of n=4: x = 62.2 % ± 2.1; WTI: x = 19.6 % ± 1.76), resembling the other allospecies, the smaller, polytypic P. elegans (for distribution on the Philippines see Dickinson et al., 1991 and Kennedy et al., 2000), with a WTI around 15 %.

[Additional taxa of geospecies IV on the Philippines]