The chestnut-bellied seed finch (Sporophila angolensis) is a species of
bird in the family
Thraupidae, but was until recently placed in
Emberizidae.
It is found widely in shrubby and grassy areas in tropical and subtropical
South America. It has been replaced west of the
Andes (and in
Central America) by the closely related
thick-billed seed finch (S. funerea). The two have often been considered
conspecific as the lesser seed-finch, using the older scientific name Oryzoborus angolensis.
Taxonomy
The chestnut-bellied seed finch was
formally described by the Swedish naturalist
Carl Linnaeus in 1766 in the
twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae under the
binomial nameLoxia angolensis.[2] Linnaeus based his description on "The Black Gros-Beak" that had been described and illustrated in 1764 by the English naturalist
George Edwards.[3] Edwards's illustration was from a live bird belonging to the barrister
Philip Carteret Webb. Edwards mistakenly believed that the bird had come from Angola. The chestnut-bellied seed finch does not occur there and the
type locality is now designated as eastern Brazil.[3][4]
The chestnut-bellied seed finch and the
thick-billed seed finch were formerly considered
conspecific and together had the English name "lesser seed-finch".[5][6] Both species were formerly placed in the genus Oryzoborus but
molecular phylogenetic studies found that Oryzoborus was embedded in Sporophila.[7][8] The chestnut-bellied seed finch was therefore moved to Sporophila, a genus that had been introduced by the German ornithologist
Jean Cabanis in 1844.[9][10]