The chestnut-headed tanager (''Thlypopsis pyrrhocoma'') is a species of bird in the tanager family

Thraupidae The tanagers (singular ) comprise the bird family Thraupidae, in the order Passeriformes. The family has a Neotropical distribution and is the second-largest family of birds. It represents about 4% of all avian species and 12% of the Neotrop ...

this is found in the

Atlantic Forest The Atlantic Forest ( pt, Mata Atlântica) is a South American forest that extends along the Atlantic coast of Brazil from Rio Grande do Norte state in the northeast to Rio Grande do Sul state in the south and inland as far as Paraguay and t ...

of southeast Brazil, eastern Paraguay and far northeastern Argentina. It was formerly the only member of the genus ''Pyrrhocoma'' but is now placed in ''

Thlypopsis ''Thlypopsis'' is a genus of birds in the tanager family Thraupidae. Taxonomy and species list The genus ''Thlypopsis'' was introduced by the German ornithologists Jean Cabanis in 1851. The name combines the Ancient Greek ''thlupis'', a word for ...

''.

Taxonomy

The chestnut-headed tanager was formally described in 1844 by the English naturalist

Hugh Edwin Strickland Hugh Edwin Strickland (2 March 1811 – 14 September 1853) was an English geologist, ornithologist, naturalist and systematist. Through the British Association, he proposed a series of rules for the nomenclature of organisms in zoology, known a ...

under the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Tachyphonus ruficeps''. The species was subsequently placed in the

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus ''Pyrrhocoma'' by the German ornithologist

Jean Cabanis Jean Louis Cabanis (8 March 1816 – 20 February 1906) was a German ornithologist. Cabanis was born in Berlin to an old Huguenot family who had moved from France. Little is known of his early life. He studied at the University of Berlin from 183 ...

. A

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study published in 2014 found that the chestnut-headed tanager was embedded in a clade containing members of the genus ''

''. The genera were therefore merged but as ''Thlypopsis'' already contained the

rust-and-yellow tanager The rust-and-yellow tanager (''Thlypopsis ruficeps'') is a species of bird in the family Thraupidae. It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist montane forest Montane ecosystems are fo ...

as ''Thlypopsis ruficeps'' d'Orbigny & Lafresnaye, 1837, a new specific epithet ''pyrrhocoma'' was coined for the chestnut-headed tanager, using the earlier generic name "to communicate past taxonomic connections". The name comes from the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic p ...

''purrhokomēs'' meaning "red-haired". The species is

: no subspecies are recognised.

References

chestnut-headed tanager The chestnut-headed tanager (''Thlypopsis pyrrhocoma'') is a species of bird in the tanager family Thraupidae this is found in the Atlantic Forest of southeast Brazil, eastern Paraguay and far northeastern Argentina. It was formerly the only memb ...

Birds of the Atlantic Forest Birds of the Selva Misionera

Tanagers {{Thraupidae-stub