Red-throated Loon - Taxonomy and Etymology

Taxonomy and Etymology

First described by Danish naturalist Erik Pontoppidan in 1763, the Red-throated Loon is a monotypic species, with no distinctive subspecies despite its large Holarctic range. Pontoppidan initially placed the species in the now-defunct genus Colymbus, which contained grebes as well as loons. By 1788, however, German naturalist Johann Reinhold Forster realized that grebes and loons were different enough to warrant separate genera, and moved the Red-throated Loon (along with all other loon species) to its present genus. Its relationship to the four other loons is complex; although all belong to the same genus, it differs more than any of the others in terms of morphology, behaviour, ecology and breeding biology, and may be the basal lineage of the genus. It is thought to have evolved in the Palearctic, and then to have expanded into the Nearctic.

The genus name Gavia comes from the Latin for "sea mew", as used by ancient Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder. The specific epithet stellata is Latin for "set with stars" or "starry", and refers to the bird's speckled back in its non-breeding plumage. "Diver" refers to the family's underwater method of hunting for prey, while "red-throated" is a straightforward reference to the bird's most distinctive breeding plumage feature. The word "loon" is thought to have derived from the Swedish lom, the Old Norse or Icelandic lómr, or the Old Dutch loen, all of which mean "lame" or "clumsy", and is a probable reference to the difficulty that all loons have in moving about on land.