Amethyst woodstar


The amethyst woodstar is a species of hummingbird in the family Trochilidae.
It is found in most of central, and eastern South America proper, in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Suriname-, Paraguay, Peru, and Venezuela. The bird's range surrounds the Amazon countries into the Andes foothills and higher elevations of upstream river systems, but is not along the Amazon River proper in the central Amazon Basin, or the central upper Basin; it is in Brazil at the river's outlet, and upstream for about 500 km.
At 7.5 cm and under 3 grams in weight, this is one of the smallest birds in existence. It has a generalist diet of nearby flower nectar and insects in flight. This species is generally poorly understood due to its rarity. Said rarity has also made it difficult to set a concrete conservation status.
There is a hypothesized hybrid between this species and Chlorostilbon aureoventris dubbed Calliphlox iridescens Gould.

Taxonomy

The amethyst woodstar was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1781 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Trochilus amethystinus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The type locality is Cayenne in French Guiana. The amethyst woodstar is now placed in the genus Calliphlox that was introduced by the German zoologist Friedrich Boie in 1831. The species is monotypic. The generic name is derived from the Ancient Greek kalliphlox meaning "beautifully blazing". The specific epithet is Latin for "amethyst-coloured".

Habitat

The amethyst woodstar's natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest.