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Type: Article
Published: 2017-06-11
Page range: 293–300
Abstract views: 52
PDF downloaded: 1

A new genus for the Blue-and-yellow Tanager (Aves: Passeriformes):  a suggested adjustment to the classification of the Thraupidae

Ornithology Department, Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, 1900 Benjamin Franklin Parkway, Philadelphia, PA, 19103, USA; & Comitê Brasileiro de Registros Ornitológicos.
Aves monotypic genus Neotropical birds Pipraeidea taxonomy Thraupis

Abstract

Recent DNA-based studies have found that the genus Thraupis, as traditionally defined, is polyphyletic, with the Blue-and-yellow Tanager (historically treated as Thraupis bonariensis) being sister to the Fawn-breasted Tanager (Pipraeidea melanonota). As a result, most subsequent classifications lumped both species under a single genus, Pipraeidea. Here I show that both species differ markedly in plumage, morphology, voice, and behavior, each of them being more similar to a distantly related species than to each other. As such, I argue that the treatment of the Blue-and-yellow Tanager in Pipraeidea creates an undiagnosable genus contrasting greatly with the generic limits commonly applied to the tanagers. To avoid this situation, I propose the recognition of a new genus, Remsenornis gen. nov., for the Blue-and-yellow Tanager.

 

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