Cyanophaia Reichenbach 1854, [
OD]: the name was introduced with five originally included species; for each of these, Reichenbach suggested an original combination and an author (while he claimed the combination with
Cyanophaia for himself), as well as a homeland.
- Trochilus bicolor Linn. 1766 from Guyana.
Linnaeus 1766 proposed no such name; but there is indeed a Trochilus bicolor Gmelin 1788, [OD], from Guadeloupe, in the 13th ed. of (Linnaeus') Systema naturae. Note that Reichenbach messed up a lot of his Linnaeus/Gmelin authorships (in fact, the four that are on this particular page are all wrong: "Tr. Thaumanthias L. Gm. 1766" should have been "Linn. 1766", "Tr. leucogaster L. Gm. 1766" should have been "L. Gm. 1788", "Tr. sapphirinus L. Gm. 1766" should have been "L. Gm. 1788", and "Tr. bicolor Linn. 1766" should have been "L. Gm. 1788"). Guyana is the type locality of the next species (Tr. sapphirinus) in Gmelin's work...
- Trochilus coerulescens Lodd. (sine datum) from Mogabambo in Brazil.
Loddige doesn't appear to have published such a name, and I have not been able to find a place called "Mogabambo" in Brazil. Nothing in the OD of Cyanophaia indicates what this name name was supposed to denote. A year later, in his [Trocholinarum enumeratio] (which acted as a revised second edition of the 1854 Aufzählung), Reichenbach added a reference, "t. 770. 4785.", to a figure on [one of his own published plates]. [Elliot 1881] contended (without explaining) that "Trochilus coerulescens, "Lodd.," is the Trochilus caeruleigularis, Gould" = Trochilus coeruleogularis Gould 1851, [OD], from Veragua in Panama, now in Lepidopyga. The bill pattern on Reichenbach's plate (both mandibles red with black tip) does not match this species, however, and treating "coerulescens" in Reichenbach's Aufzählung as a recognisable typo for coeruleogularis seems a bit of a stretch to me. (The name does not match except for the few first letters, the stated author does not match, the stated type locality does not match, no other clues are given.) Maybe Elliot had some kind of external evidence supporting this interpretation? The other option would be to treat coerulescens as new; but, in this case, this name is only available as Hylocharis (Cyanophaia) coerulescens Reichenbach 1855, from the Enumeratio and thanks to the reference to the plate which was added there; in the Aufzählung where Cyanophaia is introduced, it is a nomen nudum -- which bars it from becoming the type of the new genus name.
- Trochilus lazulus Vieill. 1822 from Chrinatilla in Mexico.
[OD]. Now placed in the synonymy of Campylopterus falcatus. Vieillot's original type locality was Amérique méridionale -- southern America; the species doesn't occur in Mexico at all; in [Trocholinarum enumeratio], Reichenbach treated this name as synonymous with the next one, which it is certainly not and rather suggests that he misinterpreted it entirely.
- Trochilus Doubledayi Bourc. 1837 from Rio Negro in Brazil.
[OD]. Now Cynanthus (latirostris) doubledayi, and actually from Mexico (but Bourcier, in the OD, had indeed said it to be presumably from Rio Négro). In [Trocholinarum enumeratio], Reichenbach made this name a synonym of Tr. lazulus Vieillot, and added a reference to figures 4783-84 on [his plate 770]. (This is the same plate that also shows Reichenbach's Hylocharis (Cyanophaia) coerulescens, which actually seems to differ from the bird in fig. 4783-84 mainly in having the blue of the throat extending down onto the breast and darker centres to the undertail coverts -- that is, about as doubledayi differs from latirostris...)
- Trochilus Duchassainii Bourc. 1851 from Panama.
[OD]. [Elliot 1881] identified this as an immature male of Tr. coeruleogularis Gould, noting that Bourcier's type was in his collection.
There is no originally fixed type.
Any of the originally included species cited by an available name in the OD can become the type by subsequent designation.
The first subsequent type designation was by [
Gray 1855], who designated "
Trochilus bicolor Linn.".
"
Trochilus bicolor Linn. 1766" is interpreted as a messed-up citation of
Trochilus bicolor Gmelin 1788.
(Problems in Elliot's interpretation, in the context of the present Code, include:
- He used a method of type fixation "by elimination", which stipulates that species which have been taken out of a genus by subsequent workers thereby ceased to be eligible as the type of this genus. Type fixations by elimination were quite widely accepted, mainly in America, up to the early 20th C; they are explicitly excluded by the ICZN. Note, in particular, that Elliot rejected Gmelin's bird as a possible type species
on the account that he regarded this bird as belonging in
Thalurania, hence not a possible candidate type species for
Cyanophaia.
- The "type species" concept which he accepted was one of taxonomic species: he designated as the type of
Cyanophaia "
C. caeruleigularis", which he believed to be the valid name of a taxon to which he also referred two of the names cited by Reichenbach. In the ICZN, a type species is a nominal species (a nomenclatural concept of species, determined by an available species-group name and anchored into the reality by its type material), not a taxonomic species (a set of individuals out there, deemed conspecific by a taxonomist).
Tr. coeruleogularis as such is not eligible to be the type of
Cyanophaia because it was not among the names that Reichenbach cited in the OD. Whether
Tr. coeruleogularis and two of the names cited by Reichenbach are deemed to apply to the same taxonomic species, or not, is a taxonomic opinion, not nomenclatural business. Nomenclaturally, these three names must be treated as three distinct objects; only one of them can be the type of the genus.)