Piapiac

The piapiac (Ptilostomus afer) is an African bird in the crow family, and is the only member of the genus Ptilostomus. It is most closely related to the Central Asian ground jays. == Taxonomy == In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the piapiac in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Senegal. He used the French name La pie du Sénégal and the Latin Pica Senegalensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the piapiac. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Corvus afer and cited Brisson's work. The specific name afer is Latin for "Africa". The piapiac is the only species placed in the genus Ptilostomus that was introduced by the English naturalist William Swainson in 1837. The species is monotypic. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2005 found that the piapiac from Africa was most closely related to the ground jays…