The grey-headed tanager (''Eucometis penicillata'') is a widely distributed species of small

Neotropical The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropical terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperate zone. Definition In bioge ...

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 Neotropica ...

. It is the only member of 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 nom ...

''Eucometis''. It is found in Central America and northern South America from Mexico to Brazil. Its natural

habitat In ecology, the term habitat summarises the array of resources, physical and biotic factors that are present in an area, such as to support the survival and reproduction of a particular species. A species habitat can be seen as the physical ...

s are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest, subtropical or tropical swamps, and heavily degraded former forest.

Taxonomy

The grey-headed tanager was formally described in 1825 by the German naturalist Johann Baptist von Spix under the binomial name ''Tanagra penicillata''. Spix did not specify a type locality by this was later designated as Fonte Boa in the Brazilian state of Amazonas. The grey-headed tanager is now the only species placed in the

''Eucometis'' that was introduced by the English zoologist

Philip Sclater Philip Lutley Sclater (4 November 1829 – 27 June 1913) was an England, English lawyer and zoologist. In zoology, he was an expert ornithologist, and identified the main zoogeographic regions of the world. He was Secretary of the Zoological ...

in 1856. The genus name is derived from

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 ...

''eukomēs'' meaning "with lovely hair". The specific epithet ''penicillata'' is from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

diminutive of ''peniculus '' meaning "brush". Within the

, the grey-headed tanager is a member of the subfamily Tachyphoninae and is the

sister species In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree. Definition The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram: Taxon A and ...

to the black-goggled tanager in the

monospecific 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 ''Trichothraupis''. Seven subspecies are recognised: * ''E. p. pallida'' Berlepsch, 1888 – southeast Mexico to Honduras * ''E. p. spodocephalus'' ( Bonaparte, 1853) – Nicaragua and north Costa Rica * ''E. p. stictothorax'' Berlepsch, 1888 – west-central Costa Rica to west Panama * ''E. p. cristata'' ( Du Bus de Gisignies, 1855) – east Panama, north Colombia and northwest Venezuela * ''E. p. affinis'' Berlepsch, 1888 – north Venezuela * ''E. p. penicillata'' (Spix, 1825) – southeast Colombia, east Ecuador and east Peru east through the Guianas and north Brazil * ''E. p. albicollis'' (

d'Orbigny Alcide Charles Victor Marie Dessalines d'Orbigny (6 September 1802 – 30 June 1857) was a French naturalist who made major contributions in many areas, including zoology (including malacology), palaeontology, geology, archaeology and anthrop ...

& Lafresnaye, 1837) – Bolivia and Paraguay through central Brazil

References

External links

Xeno-canto: audio recordings of the grey-headed tanager
grey-headed tanager Birds of Central America Birds of Colombia Birds of Venezuela Birds of the Guianas Birds of the Amazon Basin Birds of the Pantanal grey-headed tanager Birds of Brazil Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Thraupidae-stub

Taxonomy

References

Further reading

External links