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Blue-tailed emerald

(Chlorostilbon mellisugus)

galery

Description

The blue-tailed emerald (Chlorostilbon mellisugus) is a hummingbird found in tropical and subtropical South America east of the Andes from Colombia east to the Guianas and Trinidad, and south to northern Bolivia and central Brazil. The blue-tailed emerald was formally described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Trochilus mellisugus. The specific epithet combines the Latin mel meaning "honey" and sugere meaning "to suck". Linnaeus's description was typically brief and it was unclear which species he was describing. When he updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition in 1766 Linnaeus added citations including one to the "all-green humming-bird" that had been described and illustrated by the English naturalist George Edwards in his Gleanings of Natural History. The identity still remained uncertain but in 1950 the American ornithologist John T. Zimmer argued that the species Trochilus mellisugus described by Linnaeus could only have been the blue-tailed emerald. This has been generally accepted. Zimmer designated the type locality as Cayenne in French Guiana. The blue-tailed emerald is now placed in the genus Chlorostilbon that was introduced by the English ornithologist John Gould in 1853. Seven subspecies are recognised: C. m. caribaeus Lawrence, 1871 – northeast Venezuela, Trinidad and Netherlands Antilles C. m. duidae Zimmer, JT & Phelps, 1952 – Cerro Duida (south Venezuela) C. m. subfurcatus Berlepsch, 1887 – south Venezuela, Guyana and Rio Branco region (northwest Brazil) C. m. mellisugus (Linnaeus, 1758) – Suriname, French Guiana and northeast Brazil C. m. phoeopygus (Tschudi, 1844 – upper Amazonia C. m. napensis Gould, 1861 – northeast Peru C. m. peruanus Gould, 1861 – southeast Peru and east Bolivia Molecular phylogenetic studies have shown that the blue-tailed emerald is sister to the glittering-bellied emerald.

Taxonomic tree:

Domain:
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum:
Class: Aves
Order:Apodiformes
Family:Trochilidae
Genus:Chlorostilbon
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