Caribbean Martin

About the Caribbean Martin

The Caribbean martin or white-bellied martin (Progne dominicensis) is a large swallow. It has at various times been considered alternatively as a race of the purple martin, Progne subis. In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the Caribbean martin in the second volume of his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in the French colony of Saint-Domingue on the island of Hispaniola. He used the French name L'hirondelle de S. Dominigue and the Latin name Hirundo Dominicensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. The Caribbean martin was subsequently described by the French polymath, the Comte de Buffon, in 1779 and by the English ornithologist John Latham in 1783. Latham used the English name "St Dominico swallow" but neither Buffon nor Latham introduced a scientific name.

The German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin included the Caribbean martin when he revised and expanded Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae in 1789. He placed it with the swallows in the genus Hirundo and coined the binomial name Hirundo... Wikipedia →