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Type: Correspondence
Published: 2014-11-13
Page range: 194–196
Abstract views: 20
PDF downloaded: 1

Polyphyly of Hylophilus and a new genus for the Tawny-crowned Greenlet
(Aves: Passeriformes: Vireonidae)

Department of Biology & Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Box 351800, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Department of Biology & Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, University of Washington, Box 351800, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA
Aves Passeriformes Vireonidae

Abstract

Once a catch-all taxon for various small, greenish passerines (Sclater 1881), today the genus Hylophilus Temminck contains 15 species of Neotropical greenlets in the avian family Vireonidae (Clements et al. 2013). Although Hylophilus species do share some common anatomical proportions and plumage features (Baird 1866; Ridgway 1904), some striking and concordant differences in habitat, voice, and iris color led Ridgely and Tudor (1989) to posit that the genus might contain sufficient diversity to warrant splitting into multiple genera.