Species names within the genus Agapornis
Part 4 – Agapornis taranta
By Dirk Van den Abeele,
Ornitho-Genetics VZW
Published in Agapornis.info the BVA-International magazine of August 2023
I can imagine that a lot of you, especially if you have read the previous articles, might be surprised and wonder whether it is taranta or tarantas? Which is understandable, the naming within taxonomy is not always simple. But I can reassure you, it is indeed taranta, since this species is named after a geological location, namely the Taranta mountain pass in what was then Abyssinia, where these were first spotted by their discoverer. The Taranta mountain pass is located in Massawa which used to be North-East Abyssinia, now this is the border area of Ethiopia with Djibouti. The Taranta mountain itself is located in Tadjourah, Djibouti.
1814. The first description of Agapornis taranta comes from the book by Henry Salt: A Voyage to Abyssinia, & Travels into the interior of that country, executed under the orders of the British Government in the years 1809 & 1810. It was published in 1814 and in the back of the book there is an addendum (appendix IV) which was added by Edward Smith Stanley and John Latham under the title Remarks on the birds of Abyssinia. In it Sir Edward Smith Stanley, the 13th Count of Derby (1775-1851) describes Agapornis taranta. He calls this species: ‘Psitaccus taranta’.
1822. In General History of Birds the British doctor John Latham (1740 – 1837) described various (new) bird species. He based his works and descriptions on the various skins which were collected and sent by the explorers. In the second edition from 1822 he describes Agapornis taranta. According to the mindset of that time he paid little attention to the guidelines and proposals by Carl Linneaus in his Systema Naturæ. One of these proposals was to use a genus name and a species name for each species and to use Latin for these names, but John Latham simple gave an English name to this species: Abyssinian Parrakeet. This was actually a pity, since a lot of birds described and classified by him, had to be renamed later on.
1832. Edward Lear (1812 –1888) started making illustrations of birds at an early age. Editors saw the benefit of these and in 1832 his illustrations of parakeets were published in a book Illustrations of the Family of Psittacidae, or Parrots. In it he had a beautiful drawing of Agapornis taranta. Although Stanley classified this species within the genus Psittacus, Lear changed this and called the bird Psittacula taranta.
1836. Selby placed this birds in a separate genus Agapornis.
1837. In 1837 William Swainson (1789-1855) introduced in his book On the natural history and classification of birds, the name Poicephalus for a genus in which he classified a number of large African parakeets. Within this genus he also classified taranta and called them Poicephalus taranta. Yet no one took his advice, and luckily so, since current DNA research has shown that this taranta indeed fits within the family Agapornis and definitely not Poicephalus [1].
1837. The German naturalist Wilhelm Peter Eduard Simon Rüppell (1794-1884) undertook a few trips throughout Africa and published in 1837 Neue Wirbelthiere, zu der Fauna von Abyssinien gehörig. In it he describes the fauna of the region at that time known as Abessinia or the Ethiopian empire. He also adjusted the name and used Psittacus Tarantae. This way he created a Latin version of this name (which is actually not necessary for geological locations) and in the entire book he also mentions the species names of the birds with a capital letter. The latter is understandable since in German not only the names of people, holidays, brands, places, etc start with a capital letter but also all nouns. Later on it would become clear that taxonomy has its own rules which negated the local grammatical rules. As a result in taxonomy the name of a species will only be written with a capital letter at the start of a sentence.
1838. In France Alexandre Bourjot-Saint-Hilaire (1801-1886) published the third edition of Histoire Naturelle des Perroquets. In it he mentions Agapornis taranta, just like Eduard Rüppell under the latinized name Psittacula tarantae.
1842. Hugh Edwin Strickland (1811 – 1853) published the basic rules for the zoological nomenclature. One of these rules states among other that if multiple names are used within the same taxon, only the first published name should be accepted as the valid one. This means that all members of the genus Agapornis should be classified within this genus and the first species name which met these guidelines is the one given by Henry Salt in 1814 to these birds, namely: taranta.
1854. Charles Lucien Bonaparte (1803 – 1857) is the first to mention in ‘Revue et Magasin de Zoologie pure et appliquée’ these birds under the correct name Agapornis taranta.
1863. In edition 11 of Journal für Ornithologie the German Martin Theodor von Heuglin (1824 – 1876) mentions Agapornis taranta a few times in his book, albeit under two different names. He mentions Agapornis taranta on page 37 as Agapornis Tarantae, just like Eduard Rüppell and Alexandre Bourjot-Saint-Hilaire did in 1937, on page 293 and 305 in the same book he mentions Psittaculus Tarantae. It is clear that despite the guidelines by Strickland in 1842 and the fact that Selby had placed these birds in 1836 under a separate genus Agapornis, he still stuck to his own classification. As far as I know the name Psittaculus was not used as a separate genus later on.
1892. The second International Congress of Zoology, decided to acknowledge the tenth edition of Systema Naturae, from 1758 and the accompanying binominal nomenclature as the basis for the Zoological nomenclature. The result was that now all names which did not comply with these requirements, were no longer valid.
1931. The German Professor Oscar Neumann (1867-1946) determined in Journal für Ornithologie, Agapornis taranta nana, as a sub species of Agapornis taranta. According to the author this sub species was somewhat smaller than the nominal type. In aviculture we also regularly hear that this sub species, contrary to the nominal type, was also able to raise multiple nests per year. Interesting detail: Oscar Rudolph Neumann also referred to the presence of an intermediate type (measured in size) between Agapornis taranta taranta and Agapornis taranta nana (should actually be nanus). According to Neumann this species was found near the Sobat river in Shoa. However this intermediate type was not included as a separate sub species in his later books. Neumann described during his lifetime a lot of new species and sub species. The question of course is, what is actually the definition of a sub species and what is the difference with the natural variation? A subject which I have raised numerous times [2]. It is a fact that geneticists only work with species for their research and that sub species is really the purview of taxonomists. A lot of the (sub) species described and named by Neumann, were later dismissed because they were not really new species or sub species. This is also the case for Agapornis taranta nana and this sub species was no longer recognized by taxonomists later on.
1937. Peter’s checklist of Birds of the World mentions Agapornis taranta nana. Checklist of the Birds of the World, was published between 1931 and 1987 in 16 volumes. James Lee Peters (1889 –1952) was an American ornithologists who was one of the first to draft a global overview of species and also sub species in birds. His work was continued by others after his death for another 35 years. Later on this list became the basis for other lists such as Clement’s checklist and Howard & Moore checklist. These lists are now also available online. In the same work Agapornis taranta taranta, was understandably included as the nominal type.
1947. Hans von Boetticher (1886 –1958) also added his two cents in Zoologische Anzeiger Leipzig. Because the alulas in Agapornis taranta, according to him, were unusually long compared to other species Boetticher proposed in 1946 to put Agapornis taranta in the separate genus Donkorella. This name referred to the indigenous name for this bird “Donkoro”. This genus included only one type of taranta. This reasoning was later on adopted by no other taxonomists
1973. Joseph M. Forshaw was the first one to no longer mention in “Parrots of the World” from 1973, the sub species nanus. Other checklists and taxonomists would later follow suit. Yet it would take a long time before everyone in aviculture was convinced of this.
In the next article we will discuss Agapornis swindernianus.
Keep up the good work!!
Dirk
Literature
[1] A. Manegold en L. Podsiadlowski, ‘On the systematic position of the Black-collared Lovebird Agapornis swindernianus (Agapornithinae, Psittaciformes)’, J. Ornithol., pp. 1–9, 2014, doi: 10.1007/s10336-013-1039-z.
[2] D. Van den Abeele, Lovebirds Compendium, 1th ed. Warffum- The Netherlands: About Pets, 2016.