Cassia crossbill

Cassia crossbill
Male and juvenile in a pine

Critically Imperiled  (NatureServe)[1]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Fringillidae
Subfamily: Carduelinae
Genus: Loxia
Species:
L. sinesciuris
Binomial name
Loxia sinesciuris
Benkman, 2009

The Cassia crossbill (Loxia sinesciuris) is a passerine bird in the family Fringillidae. It is endemic to the South Hills and Albion Mountains in southern Idaho.[2] Cassia crossbill rarely interbreeds with other call types that move into the South Hills of Idaho yearly, and can be considered to represent a distinct species via ecological speciation.[2] The Cassia crossbill have specialized beaks to access the seeds of the lodgepole pine cones in this region, but are poorly adapted to other pine cones in surrounding regions.[3]

The species was first described in 2009,[3] but only was accepted to be its own species in 2017, when it was found out to be phylogenetically distinct from the red crossbill, and its 10 unique call types.[2][4]

  1. ^ "NatureServe Explorer 2.0".
  2. ^ a b c Parchman, Thomas L.; Buerkle, C. Alex; Soria-Carrasco, Víctor; Benkman, Craig W. (2016-11-01). "Genome divergence and diversification within a geographic mosaic of coevolution". Molecular Ecology. 25 (22): 5705–5718. doi:10.1111/mec.13825. ISSN 1365-294X. PMID 27682183.
  3. ^ a b Cite error: The named reference 2009 OG was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference 2017 AOS Supplement was invoked but never defined (see the help page).