La Palma chaffinch

La Palma chaffinch
Male
Conservation status
Endangered  (IUCN 3.1)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Fringillidae
Subfamily:	Fringillinae
Genus:	Fringilla
Species:	F. coelebs
Subspecies:	F. c. palmae
Trinomial name
Fringilla coelebs palmae Tristram, 1889
Synonyms
Fringilla palmae

The La Palma chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs palmae), also known as the Palman chaffinch or, locally in Spanish as the pinzón palmero or pinzón hembra, is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. It is a subspecies of the common chaffinch that is endemic to La Palma in the Canary Islands, a Spanish archipelago that forms part of Macaronesia in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Taxonomy

Suárez et al. (2009) found, in a genetic analysis of chaffinches Fringilla coelebs in the Canary Islands that at least three subspecies are present there: F. c. palmae occurs on La Palma in the western Canary Archipelago, F. c. canariensis on La Gomera and Tenerife. The form on El Hierro is F. c. ombriosa, and a fourth, hitherto undescribed taxon previously assigned to F. c. canariensis, on Gran Canaria. Other Macaronesian subspecies occur in the Azores (F. c. moreletti) and on Madeira (F. c. maderensis).

References

Sources

• Marshall, H. Dawn; Baker, Allan J. (1998). "Rates and Patterns of Mitochondrial DNA Sequence Evolution in Fringilline Finches (Fringilla spp.) and the Greenfinch (Carduelis chloris)" (PDF). Molecular Biology and Evolution. 15 (6): 638–646. doi:10.1093/oxfordjournals.molbev.a025967. PMID 9615445. Archived from the original (PDF) on 9 October 2012.
• Suárez, Nicolás M.; Betancor, Eva; Klassert, Tilman E.; Almeida, Teresa; Hernández, Mariano; Pestano, José J. (November 2009). "Phylogeography and genetic structure of the Canarian common chaffinch (Fringilla coelebs) inferred with mtDNA and microsatellite loci". Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. 53 (2): 556–564. doi:10.1016/j.ympev.2009.07.018. PMID 19632343.