Copper-rumped Hummingbird

About the Copper-rumped Hummingbird

The copper-rumped hummingbird (Saucerottia tobaci) is a species of hummingbird in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is found in Tobago, Trinidad, Venezuela, and possibly Grenada. The copper-rumped hummingbird 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 tobaci. Gmelin based his description on the "Tobago Humming-Bird" that had been described in 1782 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his A General Synopsis of Birds. The copper-rumped hummingbird was formerly placed in the genus Amazilia. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that the genus Amazilia was polyphyletic. In the revised classification to create monophyletic genera, the copper-rumped hummingbird was moved by most taxonomic systems to the resurrected genus Saucerottia. However, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) retains it in Amazilia.

The genus Saucerottia had been introduced in 1850 by the French naturalist... Wikipedia →