Japanese Tit (Parus minor) [XC857165]
by Ding Li Yong from Tianlin Community, Shanghai, China (call)
Japanese Tit (Parus minor) [XC775405]
by Mike Nelson from Tianlin Community, Shanghai, China (call, song)
Subspecies
Parus major (Sibley and Monroe 1990, 1993) was split by Päckert et al. (2005) into Great Tit (Parus major), Eastern Great Tit (Parus minor) and Southern Great Tit (Parus cinereus) who also transferred Turkestan Tit (Parus bokharensis) (Sibley and Monroe 1990, 1993) into Great Tit (Parus major). The BirdLife Taxonomic Working Group supports the authors treatment of bokharensis because morphological, vocal and genetic differences are small, but the treatment of minor and cinereus as species is not followed owing to the authors own reservations about recognising cinereus as distinct from minor because of the minor morphological, vocal and genetic differences and due to uncertainty over taxonomic relationships in the westernmost Himalayan region which allows the possibility that major and bokharensis are connected to cinereus and cinereus to minor. Owing to this uncertainty it is not felt there is sufficient evidence to treat any of these taxa as distinct from major at the species level.
Considered by some authors as a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
Considered by some authors to be a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
The following 9 subspecies are recognised:
minor Temminck & Schlegel, 1848 - Ec, eastern Asia. Considered by some authors to be a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
dageletensis Kuroda & Mori, 1920 - Dagelet I (east of southern Korea). Considered by some authors to be a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
amamiensis Kleinschmidt, O, 1922 - Northern Ryukyu Is (Amami-oshima, Tokunoshima). Considered by some authors to be a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
okinawae Hartert, 1905 - Okinawa, in central Ryukyus. Considered by some authors to be a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
nigriloris Hellmayr, 1900 - Southern Ryukyus (Ishigaki, Iriomote). Considered by some authors to be a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
tibetanus Hartert, 1905 - South-western and south-central China (south-eastern and eastern Xizang, southern and eastern Qinghai and western Sichuan south to Yunnan and western Guizhou) and northern Myanmar. Considered by some authors to be a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
commixtus Swinhoe, 1868 - North-eastern Vietnam and south-eastern China (eastern from Yunnan, south of R Yangtze). Considered by some authors to be a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
nubicolus Meyer de Schauensee, 1946 - Eastern Myanmar, northern Thailand and north-western Indochina. Considered by some authors to be a subspecies of Great Tit (Parus major).
subtibetanus Kleinschmidt, O & Weigold, 1922 - Southern China to south-eastern Tibet and north-western Myanmar.
BirdLife International Species Factsheet