Blue-capped tanager

The blue-capped tanager (Sporathraupis cyanocephala) is a species of bird in the tanager family Thraupidae. It was formerly placed in the genus Thraupis but is now the only species in the genus Sporathraupis.

Blue-capped tanager
In El Ávila National Park, Caracas, Venezuela
Conservation status
Least Concern  (IUCN 3.1)[1]
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Thraupidae
Genus:	Sporathraupis Ridgway, 1898
Species:	S. cyanocephala
Binomial name
Sporathraupis cyanocephala (D'Orbigny & Lafresnaye, 1837)
Synonyms
Aglaia cyanocephala (protonym) Thraupis cyanocephala

It is found in Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist montane forests and heavily degraded former forest.

Taxonomy

The blue-capped tanager was formally described in 1837 by the French naturalists Alcide d'Orbigny and Frédéric de Lafresnaye from a specimen collected in the Bolivian Yungas. They coined the binomial name Aglaia cyanocephala.^[2][3] The species was usually placed in the genus Thraupis but when a molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that it was not closely related to other members of Thraupis, it was moved to the resurrected genus Sporathraupis that had been erected in 1898 by Robert Ridgway with the blue-capped tanager as the type species.^[4][5][6] The genus name Sporathraupis combines the Ancient Greek spora meaning "seed" with thraupis, the word for an unknown small bird. The specific epithet combines the Ancient Greek kuanos meaning "dark blue" with -kephalos meaning "-headed".^[7]

Eight subspecies are recognised:^[8]

• S. c. cyanocephala (d'Orbigny & Lafresnaye, 1837) – Ecuador, Peru and north Bolivia
• S. c. annectens (Zimmer, JT, 1944) – central, west Colombia
• S. c. auricrissa (Sclater, PL, 1856) – northeast Colombia and northwest Venezuela
• S. c. margaritae Chapman, 1912 – north Colombia
• S. c. hypophaea Todd, 1917 – northwest to north-central Venezuela
• S. c. olivicyanea (Lafresnaye, 1843) – north-central Venezuela
• S. c. subcinerea (Sclater, PL, 1861) – north-central to northeast Venezuela
• S. c. buesingi Hellmayr & Seilern, 1913 – extreme northeast Venezuela and Trinidad