Glittering-throated Emerald

About the Glittering-throated Emerald

The glittering-throated emerald (Chionomesa fimbriata) is a species of hummingbird in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, the Guianas, Peru, Trinidad and Venezuela.

The glittering-throated 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 fimbriatus. Gmelin based his description on "L'Oiseau-mouche à gorge tachetée de Cayenne" that had been described and illustrated by the French ornithologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760, and by the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1779.

This species was formerly placed in the genus Amazilia. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that Amazilia was polyphyletic. In the revised classification to create monophyletic genera, the glittering-throated emerald and the sapphire-spangled emerald (Chionomesa lactea) were moved by most taxonomic systems to the resurrected genus Chionomesa that had... Wikipedia →