Plum-throated cotinga
species of bird

The plum-throated cotinga (Cotinga maynana) is a species of bird in the family Cotingidae. It is found in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru.
Taxonomy and systematics
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the plum-throated cotinga in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Maynas Province, Peru. He used the French name Le cotinga des Mayas and the Latin Cotinga Maynanensis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognized by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson, one of which was the plum-throated cotinga. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Ampelis maynana and cited Brisson's work. This species is now placed in the genus Cotinga that was introduced by Brisson in 1760.
The plum-throated cotinga is monotypic.
Description
The plum-throated cotinga is 19 to 20.5 cm (7.5 to 8.1 in) long and weighs about 70 g (2.5 oz).
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This entry incorporates text from “Plum-throated cotinga” 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.