Maschalethraupis Burns, Unitt & Mason, 2016, new genus

9. Maschalethraupis, new genus (Fig. 2)

Type species. Turdus surinamus Linnaeus, 1766 (currently Tachyphonus surinamus).

Included species. Monospecific; includes only Maschalethraupis surinamus, currently recognized as Tachyphonus surinamus. The name Maschalethraupis is feminine, but surinamus, which lacks a Latin ending that unambiguously identifies the word as an adjective, may be construed as either an adjective or a noun in apposition, and so should be treated as a noun and left unchanged (Article 31.2.2 of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature 1999). None of the name endings of the subspecies of M. surinamus recognized by Hellmayr (1936) or Storer (1970) is affected by reclassification in Maschalethraupis.

Diagnosis. This genus is diagnosed by the species characters of Turdus surinamus Linnaeus, 1766.

Etymology. The name is formed from the Greek Μασχάλη, “armpit,” alluding to the male’s contrasting underwing coverts and pectoral tuft emerging from under the bend of the wing, and Greek θραυπίς, “a kind of finch mentioned by Aristotle” (Jobling 2010:385), commonly used in ornithology to coin tanager names. Its gender is feminine.

Comments. In addition to Islerothraupis, two more generic names are needed to reconcile the polyphyly of Tachyphonus with a classification in which genera are monophyletic. Tachyphonus surinamus forms a strongly supported clade (PP = 1.0) with Tachyphonus delatrii, Rhodospingus (1 species), and Lanio (4 species) (Fig. 2). Burns et al. (2014) did not find strong support for the placement of T. surinamus within this morphologically diverse clade. Therefore, unless a broad genus containing all six of these species is used (and which would be exceptionally heterogeneous in terms of plumage and morphology), a new genus name is needed for T. surinamus. Accordingly, we provide Maschalethraupis for this purpose.