Ploceidae

Ploceidae is a family of small passerine birds, many of which are called weavers, weaverbirds, weaver finches and bishops. These names come from the nests of intricately woven vegetation created by birds in this family. In most recent classifications, Ploceidae is a clade, which excludes some birds that have historically been placed in the family, such as some of the sparrows, but which includes the monotypic subfamily Amblyospizinae. The family is believed to have originated in the mid-Miocene.[1] All birds of the Ploceidae are native to the Old World, most in Africa south of the Sahara, though a few live in tropical areas of Asia. A few species have been introduced outside their native range.[2]

Weavers
A male village weaver (Ploceus cucullatus bohndorffi), building his nest
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Superfamily: Passeroidea
Family: Ploceidae
Sundevall, 1836
Genera

See text.

Taxonomy and systematics

The family Ploceidae was introduced (as Ploceïdes) by the Swedish zoologist Carl Jakob Sundevall in 1836.[3][4] These species are not closely related to the sparrows (Passeridae) nor to the Emberizidae, according to Luis Allende and colleagues.[5][6] The family is divided into the buffalo, sparrow, typical, and widow weavers. Weavers get their name because of their elaborately woven nests.

Genera

The following genera are currently classified within the family Ploceidae. For more detail, see list of Ploceidae species.

বাবুই পাখি / Weaver Bird at West Bengal, India

Description

The males of many species in this family are brightly coloured, usually in red or yellow and black. Some species show variation in colour only in the breeding season. These are seed-eating birds with rounded conical bills.

Distribution and habitat

The weaverbird colonies may be found close to bodies of water.

Behaviour and ecology

Although weavers are named for their elaborately woven nests, some are notable for their selective parasitic nesting habits instead. The nests vary in size, shape, material used, and construction techniques from species to species. Materials used for building nests include fine leaf fibers, grass, and twigs. Many species weave very fine nests using thin strands of leaf fiber, though some, like the buffalo-weavers, form massive untidy stick nests in their colonies, which may have spherical woven nests within. The sociable weavers of Africa build apartment-house nests, in which 100 to 300 pairs have separate flask-shaped chambers entered by tubes at the bottom. The sparrow weavers live in family units that employ cooperative breeding.[7] Most species weave nests that have narrow entrances, facing downward.

Many weaver species are gregarious and breed colonially.[2] The birds build their nests together for protection, often several to a branch. Usually the male birds weave the nests and use them as a form of display to lure prospective females.

Relationship to humans

They sometimes cause crop damage, notably the red-billed quelea, reputed to be the world's most numerous bird.[8][9]

  • A nest in the early stages of construction
  • Adult Sporopipes at its spherical grass nest, placed in a shrub
  • Plocepasser nest in Namibia, for year-round occupation.[7]
  • Communal Philetairus nests in central Namibia
  • Pseudonigrita nest in Kenya, with entrance below
  • Black-breasted weaver nest suspended from grass, India
  • A baya weaver on his unfinished nest, northern India
  • Nests of a baya weaver colony suspended from a palm tree, India
  • Male Quelea at nest concealed in thorny Senegalia shrub
  • Red bishop constructing a nest in reeds, South Africa
  • Nests of a colony of Sakalava weavers, Madagascar
  • Spherical village weaver nests suspended from a palm tree, West Africa
  • A southern masked weaver building his nest, Namibia
  • Hanging nest, Hargeysa, Somaliland, July 2019.
gollark: Or, well, my rough model of that.
gollark: It's evidently not quite a magic 8 ball because it generally appears to agree with random humans' judgement.
gollark: I'd assume they took some kind of pretrained language model and finetuned it on crowdsourced scenario/response pairs.
gollark: Obviously much more trustworthy.
gollark: No, it's a neural network.

References
  1. De Silva, Thilina N.; Peterson, A. Townsend; Bates, John M.; Fernando, Sumudu W.; Girard, Matthew G. (2017). "Phylogenetic relationships of weaverbirds (Aves: Ploceidae): A first robust phylogeny based on mitochondrial and nuclear markers". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 109: 21–32. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2016.12.013.
  2. Craig, Adrian (2010). "Family Ploceidae (Weavers)". In del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; Christie, D. A. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World. 15. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions. pp. 74–197.
  3. Bock, Walter J. (1994). History and Nomenclature of Avian Family-Group Names. Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History. Number 222. New York: American Museum of Natural History. pp. 157, 260.
  4. Sundevall, Carl Jakob (1836). "Ornithologiskt system". Kongliga Svenska Vetenskapsakademiens Handlingar: 43–130 [74].
  5. Allende, Luis M.; Rubio, Isabel; Ruíz-del-Valle, Valentin; Guillén, Jesus; Martínez-Laso, Jorge; Lowy, Ernesto; Varela, Pilar; Zamora, Jorge; Arnaiz-Villena, Antonio (2001). "The Old World sparrows (genus Passer) phylogeography and their relative abundance of nuclear mtDNA pseudogenes" (PDF). Journal of Molecular Evolution. 53 (2): 144–154. PMID 11479685. Archived from the original (PDF) on 21 July 2011.
  6. Arnaiz-Villena, A; Gómez-Prieto P; Ruiz-de-Valle V (2009). "Phylogeography of finches and sparrows". Animal Genetics. Nova Science Publishers. ISBN 978-1-60741-844-3. Archived from the original on 2012-09-02. Retrieved 2014-12-08.
  7. Lewis, Dale M. (3 April 2008). "Cooperative breeding in a population of White-browed Weavers Plocepasser mahali". Ibis. 124 (4): 511–522. doi:10.1111/j.1474-919X.1982.tb03795.x.
  8. Fry, C.H. & Keith, S. (2004) The birds of Africa vol. VII. Christopher Helm, London
  9. BirdLife International (2012). "Quelea quelea". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2012. Retrieved 16 July 2012.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Further reading
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