Astur (genus)

Astur is a genus containing hawks, goshawks and sparrowhawks in the family Accipitridae. The species were formerly placed in the genus Accipiter.

Astur
Eurasian goshawk (Astur gentilis)
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Accipitriformes
Family:	Accipitridae
Subfamily:	Accipitrinae
Genus:	Astur Lacépède, 1799
Type species
Falco gentilis Linnaeus, 1758

Taxonomy

The genus Astur was introduced in 1799 by the French naturalist Bernard Germain de Lacépède.^[1] The type species was later designated by the Irish zoologist Nicholas Vigors as Falco palumbarius Linnaeus, 1758, now considered as a junior synonym of Falco gentilis Linnaeus, 1758, the Eurasian goshawk.^[2][3] The name is from Latin astur, asturis meaning "hawk".^[4]

Species now placed in this genus were formerly assigned to the genus Accipiter. Molecular phylogenetic studies found that Accipiter was polyphyletic and in the subsequent rearrangement to create monophyletic genera, the genus Astur was resurrected in 2024 to contain nine species that were previously placed in Accipiter.^[5][6][7]

The genus contains nine species:^[7]

Genus Astur – Lacépède, 1799 – nine species

Common name	Scientific name and subspecies	Range	Size and ecology	IUCN status and estimated population
Cooper's hawk	Astur cooperii (Bonaparte, 1828)	southern Canada to Mexico	Size: Habitat: Diet:	LC
Gundlach's hawk	Astur gundlachi (Lawrence, 1860) Two subspecies A. g. gundlachi - (Lawrence, 1860) A. g. wileyi - (Wotzkow, 1991)	Cuba.	Size: Habitat: Diet:	EN
Bicolored hawk	Astur bicolor (, ) Four subspecies A. b. bicolor - (Vieillot, 1817) A. b. fidens - (Bangs & Noble, 1918) A. b. guttifer - (Hellmayr, 1917) A. b. pileatus - (Temminck, 1823)	Mexico to west Ecuador, the Guianas to Colombia, south to east Peru, through Amazonian Brazil to Paraguay, north-northwestern Argentina,north of Uruguay,Bolivia and to Chile	Size: Habitat: Diet:	LC
Chilean hawk	Astur chilensis (Philippi & Landbeck, 1864)	central Chile and western Argentina south to Tierra del Fuego,	Size: Habitat: Diet:
Black sparrowhawk	Astur melanoleucus (Smith, A, 1830) Two subspecies A. m. temminckii - Hartlaub, 1855 A. m. melanoleucus - (Smith, A, 1830)	coastal regions of South Africa, including the Cape Peninsula	Size: Habitat: Diet:	LC
Henst's goshawk	Astur henstii (Schlegel, 1873)	Madagascar	Size: Habitat: Diet:	VU
Eurasian goshawk	Astur gentilis (Linnaeus, 1758) Seven subspecies A. g. albidus A. g. arrigonii A. g. buteoides A. g. fujiyamae A. g. gentilis A. g. marginatus A. g. schvedowi	western Europe (e.g. Great Britain, Spain, France)	Size: Habitat: Diet:	LC
American goshawk	Astur atricapillus (Wilson, A, 1812) Three subspecies A. a. apache A. a. atricapillus A. a. laingi	western United States, including Alaska, and western Canada.	Size: Habitat: Diet:	LC
Meyer's goshawk	Astur meyerianus (Sharpe, 1878)	Moluccas, New Guinea, the Bismarck Archipelago and the Solomon Islands.	Size: Habitat: Diet:	LC

References

1. Lacépède, Bernard Germain de (1799). "Tableau des sous-classes, divisions, sous-division, ordres et genres des oiseux". Discours d'ouverture et de clôture du cours d'histoire naturelle (in French). Paris: Plassan. p. 4. Page numbering starts at one for each of the three sections.
2. Vigors, Nicholas Aylward (1824). "Sketches in ornithology; or, observations on the leading affinities of some of the more extensive groups of birds (to be continued)". Zoological Journal. 1: 308–346 [326].
3. Sangster, G.; Kirwan, G.M.; Fuchs, J.; Dickinson, E.C.; Elliott, A.; Gregory, S.M.S. (2021). "A new genus for the tiny hawk Accipiter superciliosus and semicollared hawk A. collaris (Aves: Accipitridae), with comments on the generic name for the crested goshawk A. trivirgatus and Sulawesi goshawk A. griseiceps". Vertebrate Zoology. 71: 419–424. doi:10.3897/vz.71.e67501.
4. Jobling, James A. "Astur". The Key to Scientific Names. Cornell Lab of Ornithology. Retrieved 22 August 2024.
5. Mindell, D.; Fuchs, J.; Johnson, J. (2018). "Phylogeny, taxonomy, and geographic diversity of diurnal raptors: Falconiformes, Accipitriformes, and Cathartiformes". In Sarasola, J.H.; Grange, J.M.; Negro, J.J. (eds.). Birds of Prey: Biology and conservation in the XXI century. Cham, Switzerland: Springer. pp. 3–32. ISBN 978-3-319-73744-7.
6. Catanach, T.A.; Halley, M.R.; Pirro, S. (2024). "Enigmas no longer: using ultraconserved elements to place several unusual hawk taxa and address the non-monophyly of the genus Accipiter (Accipitriformes: Accipitridae)". Biological Journal of the Linnean Society: blae028. doi:10.1093/biolinnean/blae028.
7. Gill, Frank; Donsker, David; Rasmussen, Pamela, eds. (August 2024). "Hoatzin, New World vultures, Secretarybird, raptors". IOC World Bird List Version 14.2. International Ornithologists' Union. Retrieved 21 August 2024.