Proposal (663) to South American Classification Committee
Change
English name of Ramphastos ambiguus
Our
current Note under Ramphastos ambiguus,
which we call “Black-mandibled Toucan”, is as follows:
25.
Called "Yellow-throated Toucan" by Haffer (1974), Short & Horne
(2001), Short & Horne (2002b), and del Hoyo &
Collar (2014). Proposal badly needed.
The reason for the different English names is that
the taxon swainsonii has been
treated as a separate species by many authors, and under that taxonomic
treatment (e.g. Meyer de Schauensee 1970), “Black-mandibled Toucan” is an
appropriate name. However, treatment of swainsonii
as a subspecies of R. ambiguus, following Haffer (1974), renders
“Black-mandibled” misleading because swainsonii has a reddish
mandible. When treated as separate species,
“Black-mandibled” referred nicely to the main difference between ambiguus (including abbreviatus)
and swainsonii, which was known as
“Chestnut-mandibled Toucan”. See our
Note 24 for taxonomic history.
The
authors cited in Note 25 used “Yellow-throated” for broadly defined R. ambiguus – all three subspecies
including swainsonii have yellow
throats – and we should follow this.
This also leaves the “-mandibled” names as referring only to the
two-species treatment.
Van Remsen, December
2014
_________________________________________________________________
Comments from Zimmer: YES. "Black-mandibled Toucan"
ceased to make any sense once swainsoni
was lumped.”