Black-crowned tanager


The black-crowned tanager or black-crowned palm-tanager is a species of bird of the family Phaenicophilidae, which was formerly placed in the family Thraupidae. It is found on Hispaniola.

Habitat

Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forest, subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest, subtropical or tropical mangrove forest, subtropical or tropical moist montane forest, and heavily degraded former forest.

Taxonomy

In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the black-crowned tanager in his Ornithologie. He used the French name Le palmiste and the Latin name Merula palmarum. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the black-crowned tanager. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Turdus palmarum and cited Brisson's work. The specific name palmarum is the Latin for "of palm trees". The species is now placed in the genus Phaenicophilus that was introduced by the English geologist and naturalist Hugh Edwin Strickland in 1851.