The copper-rumped hummingbird (Saucerottia tobaci) is a species of hummingbird in the "emeralds", tribe Trochilini of subfamily Trochilinae. It is found in Tobago, Trinidad, Venezuela, and possibly Grenada.
Taxonomy and systematics
The copper-rumped hummingbird was formally described in 1788 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with all the other hummingbirds in the genus Trochilus and coined the binomial name Trochilus tobaci. Gmelin based his description on the "Tobago Humming-Bird" that had been described in 1782 by the English ornithologist John Latham in his A General Synopsis of Birds. The copper-rumped hummingbird was formerly placed in the genus Amazilia. A molecular phylogenetic study published in 2014 found that the genus Amazilia was polyphyletic. In the revised classification to create monophyletic genera, the copper-rumped hummingbird was moved by most taxonomic systems to the resurrected genus Saucerottia. However, BirdLife International's Handbook of the Birds of the World (HBW) retains it in Amazilia. The genus name is from the specific epithet saucerrottei for the steely-vented hummingbird, the type species. The epithet was coined in 1846 by Adolphe Delattre and Jules Bourcier to honor the French physician and ornithologist Antoine Constant Saucerotte. The specific epithet tobaci is from the island of Tobago, the type locality.
These seven subspecies of copper-rumped hummingbird are recognised by world-wide taxonomic systems:
Subspecies S. t. monticola is darker than the nominate and has a steel blue to violet-blue tail. S. t. feliciaes back is more of a golden-green than the nominate's and its tail is bluish black. S. t. caudata has a dark blue tail. S. t. aliciae has some copper in its upperparts, a blue-black tail, and cinnamon-rufous undertail coverts. S. t. erythronotos has slightly darker underparts than the nominate and some dark purplish in the uppertail coverts. S. t. caurensis has a grayer rump and uppertail coverts than the nominate, a dark purplish tail, and bluish black undertail coverts.