Southern emerald toucanet
species of bird
The southern emerald toucanet (Aulacorhynchus albivitta) is a near-passerine bird in the toucan family Ramphastidae. It is found in montane regions of Colombia, Ecuador, western Venezuela, Peru and northern Bolivia.
Taxonomy
The southern emerald toucanet was formally described in 1840 as Pteroglossus albivitta by the French ornithologist Auguste Boissonneau based on a specimen collected in Bogotá, Colombia. The specific epithet combines Latin albus meaning "white" with vitta meaning "band" or "head-band". The southern emerald toucanet is now one of eight toucanets placed in the genus Aulacorhynchus that was introduced in 1835 by John Gould.
For many years what was then known as the emerald toucanet was considered to have 14 subspecies. In 2008 the International Ornithological Committee (IOC) divided the subspecies into five species based on differences in morphology and mitochondrial DNA sequences. The five species were the emerald toucanet (A. prasinus) with four subspecies, the blue-throated toucanet (A. caeruleogularis) with two subspecies, the white-throated toucanet (A. albivitta) with four subspecies, the black-throated toucanet (A. atrogularis) with three subspecies and the monotypic Wagler's toucanet (A. wagleri). In 2025, based on the relatively modest differences, AviList chose instead to recognise only two species, the northern emerald toucanet (A. prasinus) with seven subspecies and the southern emerald toucanet (A. albivitta) also with seven subspecies.
Seven subspecies are recognised:
A. a.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Southern emerald toucanet” is species of bird. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Southern, emerald and toucanet, not as a finished interpretation.
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Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3532791. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1840, 1835, 2008 and 2025.
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This entry incorporates text from “Southern emerald toucanet” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.