Black-tailed Tityra

The black-tailed tityra (Tityra cayana) is a medium-sized passerine bird of tropical South America. The tityras have been placed in the cotinga or the tyrant flycatcher families (Cotingidae and Tyrannidae) by various authors. But the weight of evidence strongly suggest they and their closest relatives are better separated as Tityridae; the AOU for example advocates this separation. == Taxonomy == In 1760, the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the black-tailed tityra in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Cayenne in French Guiana. He used the French name La pie-griesche gris de Cayenne and the Latin name Lanius Cayanensis cinereus. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition in 1766, he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson. One of these was the black-tailed tityra. Linnaeus included a brief description, coined the binomial name Lanius cayanus and cited Brisson's work. The species is now placed in the genus Tityra, which was introduced by the French ornithologist Louis Pierre Vieillot in 1816. Most taxonomic…