Genus of birds
The grass warblers are small passerine birds belonging to the genus Locustella. Formerly placed in the paraphyletic "Old World warbler" assemblage, they are now considered the northernmost representatives of a largely Gondwanan family, the Locustellidae.
These are rather drab brownish "warblers" usually associated with fairly open grassland, shrubs or marshes. Some are streaked, others plain, all are difficult to view. They are insectivorous.
The most characteristic feature of this group is that the song of several species is a mechanical insect-like reeling which gives rise to the group's scientific name.
Species breeding in temperate regions are strongly migratory.
Taxonomy.
The genus "Locustella" was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1829 with the common grasshopper warbler ("Locustella naevia") as the type species. The genus name "Locustella" is from Latin and is a diminutive of "locusta", "grasshopper". Like the English name, this refers to the insect-like song of some species.
There are 23 species placed in the genus:
This genus formerly included additional species. A molecular phylogenetic study of the grassbird family Locustellidae published in 2018 found that the genus "Locustella" consisted of two distinct clades. The genus was split and six species were moved to the newly erected genus "Helopsaltes".
A fossil acrocoracoid from the Late Miocene (about 11 mya) of Rudabánya (NE Hungary) is quite similar to this bone in the present genus. Given its rather early age (most Passerida genera are not known until the Pliocene), it is not too certain that it is correctly placed here, but it is highly likely to belong to the Locustellidae, or the Sylvioidea at the least. As the grasshopper warblers are the only known locustellid warblers from Europe, it is still fairly likely that the bone piece belongs to a basal "Locustella".
References.
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