The scarlet flycatcher or austral vermilion flycatcher (''Pyrocephalus rubinus'') is a species of flycatcher, closely related to the vermilion flycatcher. It is found in southeastern

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and

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

Paraguay Paraguay (; ), officially the Republic of Paraguay ( es, República del Paraguay, links=no; gn, Tavakuairetã Paraguái, links=si), is a landlocked country in South America. It is bordered by Argentina to the south and southwest, Brazil to th ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, t ...

and

Uruguay Uruguay (; ), officially the Oriental Republic of Uruguay ( es, República Oriental del Uruguay), is a country in South America. It shares borders with Argentina to its west and southwest and Brazil to its north and northeast; while bordering ...

. It is recognized as a species by some taxonomic authorities, including the International Ornithologists' Union. Others still consider it to be a subspecies of the vermilion flycatcher.

Taxonomy

The scarlet flycatcher was described by the French polymath

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French naturalist, mathematician, cosmologist, and encyclopédiste. His works influenced the next two generations of naturalists, including two prominent F ...

in 1779 in his '' Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux''. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the ''Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle'' which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined 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 ...

''Muscicapa rubinus'' in his catalogue of the ''Planches Enluminées''. The

type locality Type locality may refer to: * Type locality (biology) * Type locality (geology) See also * Local (disambiguation) * Locality (disambiguation) {{disambiguation ...

was restricted to

Tefé Tefé, known in early accounts as Teffé, is a municipality in the state of Amazonas, northern Brazil. Location Tefé is located about 525 km by air or 595 km by river to the west of Manaus on the south bank of the Rio Solimões (th ...

on the Amazon River by the American ornithologist John T. Zimmer in 1941. The scarlet flycatcher is now placed in the

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

'' Pyrocephalus'' that was introduced in 1839 by the English ornithologist and bird artist

John Gould John Gould (; 14 September 1804 – 3 February 1881) was an English ornithologist. He published a number of monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, ...

. The species is

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 ...

. The generic name combines 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 ...

''purrhos'' meaning "flame-coloured" or "red" and ''-kephalos'' meaning "-headed". The specific epithet ''rubinus'' is

Medieval Latin Medieval Latin was the form of Literary Latin Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a Literary language, literary standard language, standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used f ...

for "ruby-coloured". The scarlet flycatcher was formerly considered to be

conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Linus Pauling stated that "Biological specificity is the set of characteristics of living organ ...

with the vermilion flycatcher (''Pyrocephalus obscurus''). The species were split based on 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 2016.

Description

The scarlet flycatcher appears very similar to the vermilion flycatcher, but can be distinguished by its pointier wings. Their songs are also quite distinctive. Their range and breeding times do not generally overlap with the vermilion flycatcher.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:flycatcher, scarlet scarlet flycatcher scarlet flycatcher scarlet flycatcher