Tinamus

Tinamus
Great tinamou (Tinamus major)
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Infraclass: Palaeognathae
Order: Tinamiformes
Family: Tinamidae
Subfamily: Tinaminae
Genus: Tinamus
Hermann, 1783
Type species
Tetrao major[1]
Species

see text

Tinamus is a genus of birds in the tinamou family Tinamidae. This genus comprises some of the larger members of this South American family.

Taxonomy

The genus Tinamus was introduced in 1783 by the French naturalist Johann Hermann. He placed a single species in the genus, Tinamus soui, the little tinamou.[2] Hermann based the genus name on "Les Tinamous" used by Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The word "Tinamú" in the Carib language of French Guiana was used for the tinamous.[3][4] In 1790 the English ornithologist John Latham introduced a genus with the same name, Tinamus, also based on Buffon's work, and included five species in the genus.[5] He did not specify the type species but in 1840 the English zoologist George Gray designated the type of Tetranus as Tetrao major Gmelin, 1789 and attributed the genus to Latham (1790) and not to Hermann (1783).[6]

Although ornithologists realised that Tetranus Hermann, 1783 was earlier and therefore had priority, the type species was accepted as Tetrao major.[7][8][9] In 2025 Sara Bertelli and collaborators pointed out that under the rules of the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN), the type species should be Tinamus soui by monotypy. This species is now placed in a different genus, Crypturellus.[10][11] Bertelli and collaborators proposed that the species currently placed in the genus Crypturellus should be moved to Tetranus with Tinamus soui as the type, while the species currently placed in Tetranus should be moved to a resurrected genus Pezus that had been introduced in 1825 by the German naturalist Johann Baptist von Spix.[10][12][13] The type species of Pezus was fixed as Tinamus major by Gray in 1840.[6]

The genus contains five species:[14]

Image Common name Scientific name Distribution
Grey tinamou Tinamus tao Amazonia
Solitary tinamou Tinamus solitarius east Brazil to northeast Argentina and east Paraguay
Black tinamou Tinamus osgoodi central south Colombia and southeast Peru
Great tinamou Tinamus major south Mexico through Amazonia
White-throated tinamou Tinamus guttatus Amazonia

In 2025 a potentially new species of tinamou, the slaty-masked tinamou (Tinamus resonans) was described from the Sierra del Divisor in the Brazilian state of Acre.[15]

References

  1. ^ "Tinamidae". aviansystematics.org. The Trust for Avian Systematics. Retrieved 2023-08-05.
  2. ^ Hermann, Johann (1783). Tabula affinitatum animalium olim academico specimine edita, nunc uberiore commentario illustrata cum annotationibus ad historiam naturalem animalium augendam facientibus. Argentorati [Strasbourg]: Impensis Joh. Georgii Treuttel. pp. 164-166, 235.
  3. ^ Buffon, Georges-Louis Leclerc de (1778). "Le tinamou cendré". Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux (in French). Vol. 4. Paris: De l'Imprimerie Royale. pp. 502–514.
  4. ^ Jobling, James A. (2010). The Helm Dictionary of Scientific Bird Names. London: Christopher Helm. p. 386. ISBN 978-1-4081-2501-4.
  5. ^ Latham, John (1790). Index Ornithologicus, Sive Systema Ornithologiae: Complectens Avium Divisionem In Classes, Ordines, Genera, Species, Ipsarumque Varietates (in Latin). Vol. 2. London: Leigh & Sotheby. p. 633.
  6. ^ a b Gray, George Robert (1840). A List of the Genera of Birds : with an Indication of the Typical Species of Each Genus. London: R. and J.E. Taylor. p. 63.
  7. ^ Mayr, Ernst; Cottrell, G. William, eds. (1979). Check-List of Birds of the World. Vol. 1 (2nd ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Museum of Comparative Zoology. p. 12.
  8. ^ Dickinson, E.C.; Remsen, J.V. Jr., eds. (2013). The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World. Vol. 1: Non-passerines (4th ed.). Eastbourne, UK: Aves Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-9568611-0-8.
  9. ^ Apstein, C. (1915). "Nomina conservanda. Unter Mitwirkung zahlreicher Spezialisten herausgegeben". Sitzungsberichte der Gesellschaft Naturforschender Freunde zu Berlin (in German). 5: 119–202 [197].
  10. ^ a b Bertelli, S.; Almeida, F.C.; Giannini, N.P. (2025). "A new phylogeny and classification of the tinamous, volant palaeognathous birds from the Neotropics". Cladistics. 41 (3): 239–263. doi:10.1111/cla.12605.
  11. ^ "Chapter 15: Types in the genus group. Article 68.3. Type species by monotypy". International Code Of Zoological Nomenclature (4th ed.). International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. 1999.
  12. ^ von Spix, Johann Baptist (1825). Avium species novae, quas Brasiliam anus MDCCCXVII - MDCCCXX (in Latin). Vol. 2. Monachii [Munich]: Franc. Seraph. Hübschmanni. p. 61.
  13. ^ Claramunt, S.; Remsen, J.V. Jr (2016). "Proposal 1070: Transfer the current species of Crypturellus to Tinamus and current species of Tinamus to the genus Pezus". South American Classification Committee. Retrieved 2 March 2025.
  14. ^ AviList Core Team (2025). "AviList: The Global Avian Checklist, v2025". doi:10.2173/avilist.v2025. Retrieved 8 December 2025.
  15. ^ Morais, L.A.; Crozariol, M.A.; Godoy, F.I.; Plácido, R.A.A.; Raposo, M.A. (2025). "A new species of Tinamus (Aves: Tinamiformes) from the western Amazon, Brazil". Zootaxa. 5725 (2): 279–291. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.5725.2.6.
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