Stiles F Gary, Piacentini Vitor DE Q, Remsen J V
Instituto de Ciencias Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia..
Zootaxa. 2017 May 23;4269(3):396-412. doi: 10.11646/zootaxa.4269.3.4.
The generic classification of the Trochilidae is unusually complicated because early authors, faced with a deluge of specimens with little or no data, often based species and genus names on superficial plumage characters derived from figured plates of varying artistic quality and reproduction. Working independently and with little knowledge of species distributions and with the fixation of type species for genera inconsistent or ignored, these authors produced a bewildering array of generic synonyms. The generic nomenclature of the largest and most recently derived clade of hummingbirds, the tribe Trochilini or "emeralds", presents an unusually tangled web. Here we review the history of hummingbird generic nomenclature from Linnaeus to the present, giving detailed attention to two generic names that epitomize this confusion: Amazilia (the variety of spellings, supposed type species and circumscriptions makes for an especially complicated tangle) and Leucippus (for which nearly every successive author has advocated a different circumscription). Through application of the International Code for Zoological Nomenclature, this review lays the foundation for a revision of the generic nomenclature of the emeralds to bring it into conformity with recent genetic studies elucidating the phylogeny of this clade.
蜂鸟科的类属分类异常复杂，因为早期的作者面对大量几乎没有或完全没有数据的标本时，常常依据从艺术质量和复制效果各异的绘图版中得出的表面羽毛特征来确定物种和属名。这些作者独立工作，对物种分布了解甚少，而且对属的模式种的确定不一致或被忽视，从而产生了一系列令人困惑的属级同义词。蜂鸟中最大且最新演化出来的分支——翠蜂鸟族（Trochilini）或“翠蜂鸟”的类属命名法，呈现出异常错综复杂的局面。在此，我们回顾从林奈时代至今的蜂鸟类属命名历史，特别关注两个典型地体现了这种混乱的属名：Amazilia（其各种拼写形式、假定的模式种和分类范围构成了一个尤其复杂的乱局）和Leucippus（几乎每一位后续作者都主张对其采用不同的分类范围）。通过应用《国际动物命名法规》，本综述为修订翠蜂鸟的类属命名法奠定基础，使其与阐明该分支系统发育的近期遗传学研究结果相一致。
