Green-throated Mango

About the Green-throated Mango

The green-throated mango (Anthracothorax viridigula) is a species of hummingbird in the subfamily Polytminae. It is found in Brazil, the Guianas, Trinidad, and Venezuela. The green-throated mango was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux from a specimen collected in Cayenne, French Guiana. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-colored 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 Trochilus viridigula in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The green-throated mango is now placed in the genus Anthracothorax that was introduced by the German zoologist Friedrich Boie in 1831. The species is monotypic.

The generic name combines the Ancient Greek anthrax meaning "coal" (i.e. black) and thōrax meaning "chest". The specific epithet viridigula is from the Latin viridis meaning "green" and gula... Wikipedia →