Order
Caprimulgiformes
Family
Nyctibiidae
Genus
Nyctibius
 
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Version 1.0

This is a historic version of this account.  Current version

SPECIES

Common Potoo Nyctibius griseus

Peter Voudouris
Version: 1.0 — Published October 9, 2015

Systematics

Geographic Variation

Two subspecies usually recognized:

panamensis, described as Nyctibius griseus panamensis Ridgway 1912; type locality Natá, Coclé, Panama

Occurs from eastern Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama south, west of the Andes, to northwestern Peru, and across northern South America to northwestern Venezuela.

Very similar to nominate griseus, and perhaps not distinct from that form (Peters 1940, Cohn-Haft 1999); larger and darker than griseus (Holyoak 2001), but variation may be clinal (Cohn-Haft 1999).

griseus, described as Caprimulgus griseus Gmelin 1789; type locality Cayenne

Occurs in South America east of the Andes. See Detailed Description. Includes cornutus Vieillot 1817 (Cohn-Haft 1999), formerly applied to the southern populations.

Subspecies

Related Species

Nyctibius griseus formerly included Nyctibius jamaicensis (Northern Potoo) (e.g. Cory 1918, Peters 1940). Although griseus and jamaicensis are extremely similar in size and plumage, these now are considered to be separate species, based on their very different vocalizations (Davis 1978, Stiles and Skutch 1989).

The initial surveys of the phylogenetic relationships of potoos (Brumfield et al. 1996, Mariaux and Braun 1996) included only griseus, and not jamaicensis. Braun and Huddleston (2009), however, included samples of both species in a phylogenetic analysis based on sequence data from two mitochondrial genes. Braun and Huddleston recovered jamaicensis and griseus as sister taxa; these two species, in turn, are sister to the pair Nyctibius maculosus (Andean Potoo) and Nyctibius leucopterus (White-winged Potoo).

Recommended Citation

Voudouris, P. (2015). Common Potoo (Nyctibius griseus), version 1.0. In Neotropical Birds Online (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/nb.compot1.01