Giant Hummingbird blijkt uit twee soorten te bestaan. Vogels ten noorden van centraal Peru zijn een heuse nieuwe soort: Patagona chaski (Northern Giant Hummingbird).

Hoewel niet geheel duidelijk is of die naam geen synoniem is van de door de auteurs afgeserveerde peruviana.

Vitor Piacentini op Birdforum: "The nomenclatural part unfortunately is a little bit messy. There is no way to argue “peruviana” is nomen dubium for those reason. If the type series is mixed, one has to select a lectotype. Hellmayr (1932) indeed seems to (unintentionally) have done that by assuming “for whatever reason, right or wrong” (cf. ICZN) that a single specimen was the type. And if specimen AMNH 37501 is indeed the one regarded as the type by Hellmayr, then the authors’ own result shows it to genetically belong to the northern species, which makes chaski a synonym of peruviana!"

En de situatie is opgehelderd: de correcte naam voor de Northern Giant Hummingbird is inderdaad Patagona peruviana.

Ouch... wat een snelle reactietijd door Nacho et al!

tja...

On 16 May 2024, three days after Williamson et al. (2024) was published, MRH was apparently the first to enquire about Boucard's Patagona types at the MNHN. On 17 May, he was informed that the ‘specimens are … present in our collection but have not yet been processed for the database’, and that MNHN staff would ‘take the opportunity of [his] request to treat these types as a priority, which will therefore soon be available with photos online’ (P. Boussès in litt. 2024). On 24 May, the MNHN online database was updated and MRH shared the link with J. Williamson, explaining in detail that P. peruviana has priority and ‘the nomenclature needs to be resolved’. In response, Williamson informed MRH of her intention to stand by the conclusions in Williamson et al. (2024). On 10 June, MRH & JIA sent Williamson an early (but not substantially different) version of the present paper, with an invitation to join as a co-author, which was declined. This correspondence, archived at the Delaware Museum of Nature & Science, Wilmington, is available on request. The manuscript that was shared with Williamson was submitted to Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA on 19 June 2024, then on request shortened on 25 June 2024, but rejected by the latter’s editors on 5 July 2024 for want of it being a ‘substantial’ comment on the science in Williamson et al. (2024). Publication herein has been pursued to resolve these issues as swiftly as possible.