White-fronted Capuchin - Taxonomy

Taxonomy

This species has had problems with its name, description and type locality. The holotype does not exist; the original description by Alexander von Humboldt in 1812 describes an animal that is much darker (grayish) than those that exist close to the type locality, and the description includes a dark tail tip, a character that is completely unknown in any population of the species. Additionally, the animal which von Humboldt examined was a tame animal in Maipures, where the species is not usually found. The closest population is about three kilometers to the north, on the other side of the Tuparro River.

Defler and Hernández established a neotype from the population that was called Cebus albifrons albifrons by Hernández C. and Cooper. Another problem has been that the taxon C. a. unicolor described by Spix (1823) and further defined by Hershkovitz was indistinguishable from C. a. albifrons; the two are synonymous.