Butorides

The genus Butorides was introduced in 1852 by the English zoologist Edward Blyth to accommodate a single species, Ardea javanica Horsfield, which is therefore becomes the type species. Ardea javanica is now considered to be a subspecies of the little heron (Butorides atricapill). Within the heron family Ardeidae, Butorides is most closely related to the genus Ardeola (pond herons). The Butorides herons were formerly considered a single species, the green-backed heron, but are now normally split, with the green heron breeding in eastern North America, Central America, the West Indies and the Pacific coast of Canada and the United States, the striated heron in South America, and the little heron in the Old World tropics and warm temperate regions from west Africa to Japan. The following cladogram shows the phylogenetic relationships between the species: }} The genus contains four species: ==References==