Kingdom Animalia Family Thraupidae Phylum Chordata Rank Genus | Order Passeriformes Scientific name Saltator Higher classification Cardinal | |
Mass Buff-throated saltator: 48 g Lower classifications Buff‑throated saltator, Green‑winged saltator, Greyish saltator, Golden‑billed saltator, Black‑throated grosbeak | ||
Saltator is a genus of songbirds of the Americas. They are traditionally placed in the cardinal family (Cardinalidae) but now seem to be closer to tanagers (Thraupidae). Their English name is also saltator, except for two dark species known by the more general grosbeak.
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Saltator is Latin for "leaper" or "dancer". Louis Vieillot applied it to this genus because of the heavy way the birds hop on the ground.
Streaked saltator bird
Classification
The saltators as traditionally defined are apparently neither monophyletic nor allied with the cardinals. As already noted over 100 years ago, they are a morphologically diverse group, encompassing generally robust and fairly drab nine-primaried oscines. The different species may appear more similar to grosbeaks, tanagers or even shrikes than to cardinals, and the patterns of their eggs are also conspicuously diverse. Altogether, the "genus" seems more like an assemblage of species brought together largely by seeming even less close to other groups than to each other, rather than by a very close relationship. More extreme cases of adaptive radiation exist in birds, but this process hardly ever occurs outside island groups like Hawaiian honeycreepers, vangas, Malagasy warblers or the famous Galápagos finches.
The latest comprehensive analysis of the genus was a 1977 study which today would not be accepted whole-cloth because it followed the phenetic methodology then in vogue but now considered outdated. Even in that study the case for Saltator monophyly was weak. Where Saltator species have been included in cladistic studies they appear to be related to various tanagers. If this is verified after a more thorough study, they would probably be transferred to this family. Preliminary work seems to support this, but for now they are best considered incertae sedis.