The sharpbill ( Oxyruncus cristatus) is a small passerine bird that is placed in its own family Oxyruncidae. It was formerly placed in the family Tityridae. Its range is from the mountainous areas of tropical South America and southern Central America (Panama and Costa Rica).
It inhabits the canopy of wet forest and feeds on fruit and some . It has an orange erectile crest, black-spotted yellowish underparts and scaling on the head and neck. As its name implies, it has a straight, pointed beak, which gives its common name.
Sharpbills are most commonly found in tall dense forests but occasionally venture to the forest edge. Their diet consists of primarily of fruit, but they will also take insects, hanging upside down in from twigs to obtain insect . They will also travel in mixed-species feeding flocks with ovenbirds, , and . The breeding system employed by this species is polygamous with closely grouped males displaying in from a Lek mating. The nest of the sharpbill is built by the female and is a small cup built on a slender branch. Chicks are fed by regurgitation.
The affinities of the sharpbill to other species has long puzzled ornithologists, and this was only settled by the publication of large multilocus DNA sequencing studies. A high resolution version of the phylogenetic tree in Figure 1 is available from the first author's website here. The cladogram below shows the phylogenetic relationships of the sharpbill to other families in the parvorder Tyrannida. It is based on the study by Carl Oliveros and collaborators published in 2019 and the study by Michael Harvey and collaborators that was published in 2020. The families and species numbers are from the list maintained by the International Ornithologists' Union (IOC).
Four subspecies are recognised:
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