Tooth-billed tanager

The tooth-billed tanager (Piranga lutea) is a medium-sized American songbird in the family Cardinalidae.

Tooth-billed tanager
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Cardinalidae
Genus:	Piranga
Species:	P. lutea
Binomial name
Piranga lutea (Lesson, 1834)

Taxonomy

There six subspecies of Piranga lutea:^[1]

• Piranga lutea testacea P.L. Sclater & Salvin, 1868 (highlands of northern Costa Rica and eastern Panama)
• Piranga lutea faceta Bangs, 1898 (Santa Marta Mountains in northern Colombia, mountains of northern Venezuela and Trinidad)
• Piranga lutea haemalea Salvin & Godman, 1883 (Amazonas and Bolívar in southern Venezuela, the Guianas, Serra Imeri in northern Brazil)
• Piranga lutea toddi Parkes, 1969 (mountains of central Colombia)
• Piranga lutea desidiosa Bangs & Noble, 1918 (southwestern Colombia)
• Piranga lutea lutea (Lesson, 1834) (southwestern Colombia and northwestern Bolivia)

The tooth-billed tanager is sometimes treated as part of a more broadly circumscribed hepatic tanager species, where it makes up the lutea subspecies group (highland hepatic tanager).^[2][3] However, the IOC World Bird List splits these birds into three species, also recognising Piranga hepatica (the hepatic tanager) and Piranga flava (the red tanager).^[1]