Guianan Trogon

About the Guianan Trogon

The Guianan trogon (Trogon violaceus) is a species of bird in the trogon and quetzal family Trogonidae. It is found in Brazil, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname, Trinidad, and Venezuela. The Guianan trogon 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 the other trogons in the genus Trogon and coined the binomial name Trogon violaceus. Gmelin based his account on a description and illustration by the German botanist Joseph Gottlieb Kölreuter that had been published 1765. Gmelin did not specify a type locality, but this has been designated as Suriname. The specific epithet violaceus is from Latin and means "violet-coloured". The species is now considered to be monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.

The Guianan trogon was formerly named the violaceous trogon and included the gartered trogon (T. caligatus) and the Amazonian trogon (T. ramonianus) as subspecies. A molecular phylogenetic study of the genus Trogon based on a single mitochondrial gene was published in 2008. It found that the Guianan trogon, the blue-crowned trogon (T. curucui... Wikipedia →