Chestnut-headed tanager

Taxonomy

The chestnut-headed tanager was formally described in 1844 by the English naturalist Hugh Edwin Strickland under the binomial name Tachyphonus ruficeps. The species was subsequently placed in the monotypic genus Pyrrhocoma by the German ornithologist Jean Cabanis. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that the chestnut-headed tanager was embedded in a clade containing members of the genus Thlypopsis. The genera were therefore merged but as Thlypopsis already contained the rust-and-yellow tanager as Thlypopsis ruficeps d'Orbigny & Lafresnaye, 1837, a new specific epithet pyrrhocoma was coined for the chestnut-headed tanager, using the earlier generic name "to communicate past taxonomic connections". The name comes from the Ancient Greek purrhokomēs meaning "red-haired". The species is monotypic: no subspecies are recognised.