Northern giant hummingbird

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Northern giant hummingbird
Patagona chaski 258717642.jpg
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Clade: Strisores
Order: Apodiformes
Family: Trochilidae
Genus: Patagona
Species:
P. peruviana
Binomial name
Patagona peruviana
Boucard, 1893 [1]
Synonyms [2] [3]
  • Patagona gigas peruviana(Boucard, 1893)
  • Patagona bolivianaBoucard, 1893
  • Patagona chaskiWilliamson et al., 2024

The northern giant hummingbird (Patagona peruviana) is the largest species of hummingbird and one of two species of the genus Patagona . [2] [4]

Contents

Size

Its mass is in the range of 17–31 g (0.60–1.09 oz), making it approximately twice as heavy as the next largest hummingbird. [4] Its wingspan is 21.5 cm (8.5 in), with a body length of 23 cm (9.1 in). [5] The northern giant hummingbird is slightly larger than the southern giant hummingbird, having a longer bill, wings, tail, and body length. [4] Northern males are heavier and with longer wings than northern females. [4]

Genetic analysis

It and the sympatric southern giant hummingbird (P. gigas) were once considered the same species, i.e., the giant hummingbird, though some researchers had already classified them as different species or subspecies in the past. [1] [2] [4] Genetic analysis supports the separation of the two species which shows that they diverged between 2.1 and 3.4 million years ago, in the late Pliocene. [4]

The binomial name, Patagona chaski, was attributed to the northern giant hummingbird in 2024, [4] but this taxon was already described as Patagona peruviana by Adolphe Boucard in 1893, making P. chaski a junior synonym of P. peruviana. [1] [2]

A single F1 male hybrid between the two species has been recorded in a study that collected a sample of 101 individuals, suggesting that hybridization occurs regularly between the species. [4] However, high genome-wide FST between the two species shows that introgression and backcrossing of first generation hybrids occurs very rarely in nature, such that there is no gene flow occurring between the two species. [4]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Boucard, A. (1893). Genera of Humming Birds (PDF). London: Pardy & Son. pp. 60–61. doi:10.5962/bhl.title.8668.
  2. 1 2 3 4 Juan I. Areta; Matthew R. Halley; Guy M. Kirwan; Heraldo V. Norambuena; Niels K. Krabbe; Vítor Q. Piacentini (2024). "The world's largest hummingbird was described 131 years ago". Bulletin of the British Ornithologists' Club. 144 (3): 328–332. doi: 10.25226/bboc.v144i3.2024.a14 .
  3. ↑ Zimmer, J.T. (December 8, 1952). "Studies of Peruvian birds. No. 62, The hummingbird genera Patagona, Sappho, Polyonymus, Ramphomicron, Metallura, Chalcostigma, Taphrolesbia, and Aglaiocercus". American Museum Novitates (1595): 1–29.
  4. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Williamson, Jessie L.; Gyllenhaal, Ethan F.; Bauernfeind, Selina M.; et al. (2024-05-21). "Extreme elevational migration spurred cryptic speciation in giant hummingbirds". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 121 (21) e2313599121. Bibcode:2024PNAS..12113599W. doi:10.1073/pnas.2313599121. ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   11126955 . PMID   38739790.
  5. ↑ "Giant hummingbird, Patagona gigas (Vieillot, LJP 1824)". Avibase. 2025. Retrieved 10 November 2025.


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