World Species : Colius colius (White-backed Mousebird)

Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Coliiformes > Coliidae > Colius > Colius colius

Colius colius (White-backed Mousebird)

Contents

Wikipedia Abstract

The white-backed mousebird (Colius colius) is a large species of mousebird. It is distributed in western and central regions of southern Africa from Namibia and southern Botswana eastwards to Central Transvaal and the eastern Cape. This mousebird prefers scrubby dry habitats, such as thornveld, fynbos scrub and semi-desert. The speckled mousebird can be distinguished from this species by its differently coloured beak, legs and upperparts. In handling mousebirds the tail should be avoided, as the long retrices come out so easily as to suggest that it is a sacrificial defence mechanism.

View Wikipedia Record: Colius colius

Infraspecies

Colius colius colius
Colius colius damarensis

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0)

Unique (100)

Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0)

Unique & Vulnerable (100)

ED Score: 33.4761

EDGE Score: 3.54027

Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight ^[1]	41 grams
Birth Weight ^[1]	2.7 grams
Female Weight ^[3]	45 grams

Diet ^[2]	Frugivore, Nectarivore, Herbivore
Diet - Fruit ^[2]	70 %
Diet - Nectar ^[2]	10 %
Diet - Plants ^[2]	20 %
Forages - Mid-High ^[2]	70 %
Forages - Understory ^[2]	30 %

Female Maturity ^[3]	0 years 12 months

Clutch Size ^[4]	3
Maximum Longevity ^[5]	8 years

Ecoregions

+ Click for the list (15)

Name	Countries	Ecozone	Biome
Albany thickets	South Africa	Afrotropic	Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, and Scrub
Angolan Mopane woodlands	Angola, Namibia	Afrotropic	Tropical and Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands
Drakensberg montane grasslands, woodlands and forests	South Africa, Swaziland, Lesotho	Afrotropic	Montane Grasslands and Shrublands
Etosha Pan halophytics	Namibia	Afrotropic	Flooded Grasslands and Savannas
Highveld grasslands	South Africa	Afrotropic	Montane Grasslands and Shrublands
Kalahari Acacia-Baikiaea woodlands	Botswana, Namibia, Zimbabwe, South Africa	Afrotropic	Tropical and Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands
Kalahari xeric savanna	Botswana, Namibia, South Africa	Afrotropic	Deserts and Xeric Shrublands
Kaokoveld desert	Namibia, Angola	Afrotropic	Deserts and Xeric Shrublands
Lowland fynbos and renosterveld	South Africa	Afrotropic	Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, and Scrub
Montane fynbos and renosterveld	South Africa	Afrotropic	Mediterranean Forests, Woodlands, and Scrub
Nama Karoo	Namibia, South Africa	Afrotropic	Deserts and Xeric Shrublands
Namib desert	Namibia	Afrotropic	Deserts and Xeric Shrublands
Namibian savanna woodlands	Angola, Namibia	Afrotropic	Deserts and Xeric Shrublands
Southern Africa bushveld	Botswana, Zimbabwe, South Africa	Afrotropic	Tropical and Subtropical Grasslands, Savannas, and Shrublands
Succulent Karoo	Namibia, South Africa	Afrotropic	Deserts and Xeric Shrublands

Protected Areas

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Biodiversity Hotspots

Name	Location	Endemic
Cape Floristic Region	South Africa	No
Maputaland-Pondoland-Albany	Mozambique, South Africa, Swaziland	No
Succulent Karoo	Namibia, South Africa	No

Prey / Diet

Salvadora persica (Real Mustard Tree)	^[6]
Sideroxylon inerme	^[6]

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ ¹Terje Lislevand, Jordi Figuerola, and Tamás Székely. 2007. Avian body sizes in relation to fecundity, mating system, display behavior, and resource sharing. Ecology 88:1605
♦ ²Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ ³Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ ⁴Jetz W, Sekercioglu CH, Böhning-Gaese K (2008) The Worldwide Variation in Avian Clutch Size across Species and Space PLoS Biol 6(12): e303. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060303
♦ ⁵del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ ⁶Jorrit H. Poelen, James D. Simons and Chris J. Mungall. (2014). Global Biotic Interactions: An open infrastructure to share and analyze species-interaction datasets. Ecological Informatics.

Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database

Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund

Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License

Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0