Plain-bellied Emerald

About the Plain-bellied Emerald

The plain-bellied emerald (Chrysuronia leucogaster) is a species of hummingbird in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is found in Brazil, the Guianas, and Venezuela. The plain-bellied emerald was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other hummingbirds in the genus Trochilus and coined the binomial name Trochilus leucogaster. The species had been described and illustrated by the French naturalists Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 and Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779. Gmelin did not specify a type locality but this was designated as Cayenne, French Guiana, by Hans von Berlepsch in 1908.

The plain-bellied emerald was for a time placed in the genus Agyrtria and then in Amazilia. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that Amazilia was polyphyletic. In the revised classification to create monophyletic genera, the plain-bellied emerald was moved by most taxonomic systems to Chrysuronia. However, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World retains it in... Wikipedia →