Golden-crowned Sparrow - Systematics

Systematics

The Golden-crowned Sparrow is one of five species in the genus Zonotrichia, a group of large American sparrows. It has no subspecies. It is a sister species with, and very closely related to, the White-crowned Sparrow; studies of mitochondrial DNA show the two evolved into separate species very recently in geologic time. The White-throated Sparrow is a slightly more distant relative. Hybridization with both White-crowned and White-throated Sparrows has been reported.

Ornithologist John Latham first described the species in his book General Synopsis of Birds in 1781, but he thought it was a variety of what he called the "Black-crowned Bunting" and neglected to give it a scientific name. That lapse was corrected in 1789, when Johann Friedrich Gmelin assigned it the name Emberiza atricapilla in the 13th edition of Systema naturae. Various authorities in the 1800s (including John James Audubon) placed it in the genus Fringilla, but many assigned it to its current genus, Zonotrichia, once William John Swainson had established that genus. Peter Simon Pallas described the same species in 1844 as Zonotrichia coronata and, for much of the 1800s, this was the name used by most authorities.

In the bird's scientific name, the genus name Zonotrichia is a compound word: the Greek zone means "band" or "girdle" and the Greek thrix or trikhos means "hair". The specific epithet atricapilla is Latin for "black-haired": ater meaning "black" and capillus, meaning "hair of the head".