page_title: Yunnan nuthatch
section_title: Taxonomy
hierarchical_section_title: Yunnan nuthatch / Taxonomy
caption_attribution_description: Protolog of Sitta yunnanensis description
context_page_description: The Yunnan nuthatch is a species of nuthatch endemic to South-Western China. It was first described by William Robert Ogilvie-Grant in 1900 based on a male holotype, and it occurs in pine forests at altitudes of up to 4,000 m. It is a small nuthatch, measuring 12 cm in length, without pronounced sexual dimorphism. The upperparts are gray-blue, contrasting with the light, smooth, buffy lowerparts. It has a fine white eyebrow, distinct when the plumage is fresh, and surmounting a pronounced black eye line. It is a noisy bird, producing simple, nasal sounds, sometimes in repetitive series.
  This blue-grey bird can be up to 12 centimetres long, has a distinctive white eyebrow, and exhibits a small degree of sexual dimorphism. This noisy bird's diet consists of insects it finds on pine branches, and it is generally rare but can be locally common. Categorised as a near-threatened species on the IUCN Red List, it has a small range of 170,000 square kilometres, and a 2009 study predicted that its population could decrease by 43.6% to 47.7% by between 2040 and 2069.
context_section_description: The Yunnan nuthatch was first described as Sitta yunnanensis by Scottish ornithologist William Robert Ogilvie-Grant in 1900 based on a male holotype brought from southern Yunnan by Capt. Alfred Woodrow Stanley Wingate. It was placed into subgenus Micrositta by Buturlin in 1916, although nuthatch species are now generally grouped together under genus Sitta. According to the International Ornithological Congress and ornithologist Alan P. Peterson, there are no subspecies. In 2014, Eric Pasquet et al. published a phylogeny confirming the relationship between the Micrositta species, and found the Yunnan nuthatch to be the most basal species of the group.
  The canadensis group of species includes six species, which are also those of what is sometimes treated as the subgenus Sitta (Micrositta), the Yunnan nuthatch, the red-breasted nuthatch (S. canadensis), the Chinese nuthatch (S. villosa), the Corsican nuthatch (S. whiteheadi), the Krüper's nuthatch (S. krueperi) and the Algerian nuthatch (S. ledanti). In 1953, the Dutch ornithologists Karel Voous and John G. van Marle believe that the Yunnan Nuthatch acts as a link between the canadensis and europaea groups, and at the same time that it seemed rather close to the canadensis group of which it formed a representative close to the ancestral state, than this either in terms of its distribution and its plumage. In 1957, Charles Vaurie proposed to bring the species of the Himalayan nuthatch (Sitta himalayensis) closer. In 1998, Éric Pasquet studied the cytochrome-b of mitochondrial DNA about ten species of nuthatch, including the different species of the group of Sitta canadensis, but the Yunnan nuthatch was not included in the study. In 2014, Éric Pasquet et al. publish a nuclear and mitochondrial DNA-based phylogeny of 21 species of nuthatch and confirm the 1998 study relationships within the "canadensis group", adding the Yunnan nuthatch, which is found to be the most basic of the species this group.
caption: Protologue of Sitta yunnanensis by William Robert Ogilvie-Grant in 1900
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