La Palma chaffinch

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.

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

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.