Species names within the genus Agapornis
Part 6 – A. personatus, A.fischeri, A. nigrigenis and A. lilianae
By Dirk Van den Abeele
Ornitho-Genetics VZW
Published in Agapornis.info the BVA-International magazine of December 2023
In this final part on the naming of lovebirds we will discuss the member which are referred to as the white eye rings or ‘personatus group’. In it we have: Agapornis personatus, Agapornis fischeri, Agapornis nigrigenis and Agapornis lilianae. All members of this group have the typical white eye ring in common. I personally prefer the name ‘eye ring group’ because the name ‘personatus group’ sometimes gives the wrong impression that these species derive from Agapornis personatus, which of course is not the case. Because of this A.personatus, A.fischeri, A.lilianae and A.nigrigenis are sometimes incorrectly considered to be sub species of one another [1]–[3].
The fact that the offspring from cross breeding between these species are fertile may suggest so, but these last four species are still considered by most scientists as ‘allopatric superspecies’. This means that these species are very closely related to each other and even share a common ancestor, but over time they have become geographically separated from each other and have therefore developed their own characteristics.
In older publications we can still also find names such as Agapornis personata fischeri or Agapornis personata lilianae. These names are not only confusing but they are also wrong. As most aviculturists might suspect Agapornis nigrigenis and Agapornis lilianae are closely related, just like Agapornis personatus and Agapornis fischeri. Although the evolutionary distance between these latter two might be greater than between Agapornis lilianae and Agapornis nigrigenis [4].
If we look at the first descriptions we can see that Agapornis fischeri and Agapornis personatus were first described in the same book and if we want to nit-pick we could say that Agapornis fischeri was described first, since this was found on page 54 of ‘Journal für Ornithologie’ and Agapornis personatus on page 55. (LOL). So we shall start with Agapornis fischeri.
Agapornis fischeri
1887. Anton Reichenow (1847-1941) is the first to describe Agapornis fischeri in ‘Journal für Ornithologie‘. Reichenow names this Agapornis after its discoverer Dr Gustav Adolf Fischer (1848 – 1886), a German ornithologist who discovered this species in Northern Tanzania in 1887. Reichenow immediately classified this species within the correct genus Agapornis. The name Dr Fischer was latinized and hence became fischeri (for proper names of men the grammatical ending i or ii is added in Latin), so in other words: Agapornis fischeri. The name of this species did not cause a lot of problems within taxonomy, but in aviculture it is another matter. For some reason they used ficheri, fiserie, ficherie. I even read fisserie somewhere. Hopefully it is clear that it should be Agapornis fischeri.
Agapornis personatus
1887. In the same edition of ‘Journal für Ornithologie’, in which Anton Reichenow introduced the world to Agapornis fischeri, we also have the first description of Agapornis personatus. This actually makes sense seeing that the habitats of both species are located close to each other. It is also Dr G.A. Fischer who discovered this species in North-East Tanzania. Anton Reichenow called this species Agapornis personata. ‘Persona’ means ‘mask’ and therefore refers to the black mask on the head of personatus. He however made a mistake when naming this species. Seeing that the name of the genus Agapornis has a male ending the name of the species should in this case also be male and hence it should really be personatus instead of personata. Reichenow probably adopted this name from another genus.
1946. Von Boettischer also put in his two cents in ‘Zoologische Anzeiger Leipzig’. Just as for the other already described lovebird species, he proposes to create a sub genus for Agapornis roseicollis and the eye ring species. He therefore describes this species as Agapoornis (Amoravis) personata.
1997. In ‘Handbook of the Birds of the World’, del Hoyo, Elliott & Sargatal correct the previous taxonomists and correctly mention: Agapornis personatus.
As you can see, the mistake by the original author was luckily corrected later on. This can be done without any problems since the priority rules of the Strickland code foresee the possibility to alter the ending of a scientific species name if the grammatical gender of the species name is not correct or is changed because the genus is modified. Unfortunately Agapornis personata is still regularly used, especially in hobby literature.
Agapornis lilianae
1894. George Ernest Shelley (1840–1910), a British ornithologist discovers this species near Fort Liwondi on the ‘upper Shiré’, Nyasaland. This must undoubtedly be close to what is now the Liwondi National Park. He describes this species in ‘The Ibis’ and names it after Lilian Elizabeth Lutley Sclater, the sister of his friend Captain B.L. Sclater. Since this is the Latin form of a girl’s name the ending will be ‘ae’. Hence Agapornis lilianae was born. We should actually add that the first reports of this species actually date back to 1864. Dr John Kirk (1831 – 1922), a Scottish biologist, mentions in his article ‘On the birds of the Zambesi Region’ a small parrot which he saw twice near Shiré, Nyasaland. (Nyasaland was named after the Nyasa lake, at that time a British protectorate in Africa, which is now Malawi). He however thinks that this is actually Agapornis roseicollis, which had already been described back then in South-Africa.
Agapornis nigrigenis
1906. William Lutley Sclater (1863-1944), a British zoologist, describes this species in ‘Bulletin of the British Ornithologists Club’. He calls this bird Agapornis nigrigenis. ‘Nigrigenis’ refers to ‘niger’ and means black and ‘genis’ is cheeks, hence: black cheek. Since nigrigenis is an adjective in Latin, it receives the grammatical ending (for a male or female genus name) ‘is’ – just like with roseicollis. If the genus name were neutral the grammatical ending would be ‘um’. The actual discovery occurred two years prior, in 1904, by Dr A.H.B. Kirkman in South-West Zambia. But it was Sclater who described this species in 1906 based on the skins collected by Kirkman and hence was allowed to put his name after this species. Sometimes we see that certain hobbyists refer to Agapornis nigrigenus, but after reading this article you should realize that this is taxonomically incorrect.
Genus Agapornis
If we apply all taxonomic rules correctly this would result in the following overview list for lovebirds:
- Agapornis canus (Gmelin,1788)
- Agapornis canus ablectaneus Bangs 1918
- Agapornis canus canus (Gmelin,1788)
- Agapornis pullarius (Linnaeus 1758)
- Agapornis pullarius pullarius (Linnaeus,1758)
- Agapornis pullarius ugandae Neumann 1908
- Agapornis taranta (Stanley,1814)
- Agapornis swindernianus (Kuhl,1820)
- Agapornis swindernianus emini Neumann 1908
- Agapornis swindernianus swindernianus (Kuhl,1820)
- Agapornis swindernianus zenkeri Reichenow 1895
- Agapornis roseicollis (Vieillot,1817)
- Agapornis roseicollis catumbella Hall, BP 1952
- Agapornis roseicollis roseicollis (Vieillot,1817)
- Agapornis fischeri Reichenow 1887
- Agapornis personatus Reichenow 1887
- Agapornis lilianae Shelley 1894
- Agapornis nigrigenis Sclater,WL 1906
In addition to the species name you also see the name of the author and the date on which the species received its name in the list. Some names are surrounded by round brackets, others are not. The reason why there are sometimes round brackets surrounding the author names, is to indicate that this author previously placed this species within a different genus and we know all about that now (hopefully)!
Keep up the good work!!
Dirk
Literature
[1] P. A. Buckley, ‘Disruption of Species-typical Behavior Patterns in F1 hybrid Agapornis Parrots’, Z. Für Tierpsychol., vol. 26, nr. 6, pp. 737–743, Apr. 2010, doi: 10.1111/j.1439-0310.1969.tb01973.x.
[2] ‘Leukosen bei zoo? und wildvögeln: Avian Pathology: Vol 13, No 4’. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/03079458408418567 (consulted on 19 April 2022).
[3] V. H. Hampe, ‘Ueber Nestbau und Geschleditsuntersdiiede der Agapornis-Arten’, p. 7, 1938.
[4] A. Manegold en L. Podsiadlowski, ‘On the systematic position of the Black-collared Lovebird Agapornis swindernianus (Agapornithinae, Psittaciformes)’, J. Ornithol., pp. 1–9, 2014, doi: 10.1007/s10336-013-1039-z.
