Williamson et al. (2024) presented evidence that the northern (larger) taxon of Giant Hummingbird Patagona gigas (Vieillot, 1824), originally named Patagona peruviana Boucard, 1893, and long known as Patagona gigas peruviana (e.g., Zimmer 1930, 1952, Hellmayr 1932, Jouanin 1950, Ortiz-Crespo 1974; Table 1), merits species rank. This is plausible, although further studies are needed to rigorously test the hypothesis. However, their claim that ‘The world’s largest hummingbird is undescribed’ (Williamson et al. 2024: 7) is unfounded¹. This taxon had already been named (Boucard 1893) and described in detail (Hellmayr 1932, Zimmer 1952), based originally on two specimens (syntypes), male and female, collected at Tinta (14°09′S, 71°25′W), Peru, by Henry Whitely, both labelled as types by Boucard, and held in the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle, Paris (MNHN) (Zimmer 1930, 1952, Hellmayr 1932, Jouanin 1950). Despite this, Williamson et al. (2024) made the unfounded assumption that any or all of the 13 extant Whitely specimens labelled ‘peruviana’ in North American museums could be syntypes of P. peruviana, and made no effort to study the relevant Paris type material clearly mentioned in earlier works (e.g., Zimmer 1930, 1952, Hellmayr 1932, Jouanin 1950). None of the specimens they studied has type status; e.g., two peruviana specimens in the Field Museum (FMNH 45797–45798), formerly in the Boucard collection, also from Tinta and collected by Whitely, are not labelled as types and do not form part of the type series. On finding that DNA sequences of their samples of these ‘putative types’ contained individuals of both gigas (AMNH 37502; collected at Ccachupata) and peruviana (AMNH 37499, also from Ccachupata; AMNH 37500–37501, from Tinta) they argued that P. peruviana was a ‘nomen dubium’ and invalid, and named the northern taxon as a new species, ‘P. chaski’ (Williamson et al. 2024).

Even if Williamson et al.'s (2024) conclusion that the name peruviana was based on two different taxa had been accurate, this would not make it a nomen dubium, nor an invalid name. In that case, the appropriate procedure would have been to take action to preserve nomenclatural stability for the long-established name peruviana under Arts. 74 or 75.5 of the International code of zoological nomenclature (ICZN 1999). Likewise, their claim that Boucard's (1893) description was not diagnostic would not invalidate the name peruviana, because it was based on one or more extant name-bearing specimens. Furthermore, their claim of historical confusion between the two taxa in the literature does not hold up; and misidentifications on the labels of non-type specimens are irrelevant from the nomenclatural standpoint.

In a keynote text, Hellmayr (1932) examined Boucard's male syntype in Paris (MNHN-ZO-1989-340), provided a diagnosis of peruviana on plumage and morphometry clearly mirrored by that of Williamson et al. (2024) for their ‘chaski’, clarified that peruviana was not a ‘nomen nudum’ (contra Simon 1921), and restricted the type locality of gigas to Valparaiso, Chile (Table 1). He did not mention the female syntype (MNHN-ZO-1989-341; wing chord 129.5 mm, bill length NA, tarsus 8.6 mm, with plumage generally matching the northern taxon), perhaps because it already lacked an original Whitely label (Jouanin 1950). Hellmayr (1932) wrote (italics ours): ‘The type, a male obtained by H. Whitely on June 15, 1868, at Tinta, Dept. Cuzco… the type examined in the Paris Museum…’ (Fig. 1; MNHN-ZO-1989-340). It is clear that Hellmayr correctly applied the name peruviana to the corresponding taxon, but it is less clear whether his work qualifies as a valid lectotype designation or not depending on how one interprets the wording in Art. 74.5 (ICZN 1999) concerning Hellmayr’s use of the term ‘the type’, but VQP and many of his colleagues in the Working Group on Avian Nomenclature, as well as GMK, consider that it does not.

TABLE 1

Comparison of selected phenotypic characterisations of Patagona taxa by different authors from 1893 to present. Compare these characterisations of gigas and peruviana (= ‘chaski’), with Williamson et al.’s (2024) assertion that ‘neither Whitely, nor Boucard, nor any subsequent ornithological taxonomist of the 19th or 20th centuries, was able to distinguish these two species’.

Continued

To overcome the conflict between these possible interpretations and to promote stability, from the two syntypes we designate MNHN-ZO-1989-340 as the lectotype of P. peruviana Boucard, 1893, the same specimen referred to as ‘the type’ by Hellmayr (1932). It is an adult male unambiguously identifiable as the northern (non-migratory) taxon, i.e. ‘P. chaski’: throat with distinct blackish spots forming streaks, pale upper throat and cinnamon lower throat, wing chord 138 mm, bill length 35.7 mm, and tarsus 8.4 mm (Fig. 1, Table 1). This action fixes the identity on the already universally understood taxonomic concept associated with P. peruviana, satisfying Arts. 74.7.1, 74.7.2 and 74.7.3 (both original and amended versions; ICZN 1999, 2003), as well as clearly according with Recommendations 74A, 74C, 74D, 74E and 74G (ICZN 1999, 2003). Boucard’s female syntype (MNHN-ZO-1989-341) becomes a paralectotype with no name-bearing function (Art. 74.1.3). By priority (Art. 23), the name of the world’s largest hummingbird is P. peruviana Boucard, 1893, and ‘P. chaski’ (Williamson et al. 2024) is its subjective junior synonym (Art. 61.3.1).

Figure 1.

(A) The lectotype of Patagona peruviana Boucard, 1893 (MNHN-ZO-1989-340) designated here is the same specimen referred to as ‘the type’ by Hellmayr (1932); (B) Close-up of the throat, showing diagnostic black spots forming broad stripes on a pale background on the upper throat and contrasting cinnamon lower throat, and compare figs. 3 and S11 in Williamson et al. (2024); (C) Boucard's label (front) with original data and citation to original description (‘type Gen[era] H[umming] Birds p. 61’); (D) Whitely’s (‘H.W.’) label (front and back), with data matching Hellmayr’s (1932) reference to ‘the type’; (E) MNHN label (front), with modern registration number (images courtesy of MNHN); (F) Boxplots comparing wing chord data for the southern (gigas) and northern (peruviana) taxa of ‘Giant Hummingbird’, from Williamson et al. (2024) and Hellmayr (1932). The red circle denotes the wing chord measurement of the P. peruviana lectotype (MNHN-ZO-1989-340).