About Sporophila collaris (Boddaert, 1783)
The rusty-collared seedeater, scientifically named Sporophila collaris, is a bird species that belongs to the family Thraupidae; it was formerly classified in the related family Emberizidae. This species occurs in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical seasonally wet or flooded lowland grassland, swamps, and heavily degraded former forest. In 1775, French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon included the rusty-collared seedeater in his work Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The species was also featured in a hand-coloured engraved plate created by François-Nicolas Martinet for Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle, a work produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither Buffon's description nor the plate caption included a scientific name, but in 1783 Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Loxia collaris in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. Buffon incorrectly believed his specimen originated from Angola. In 1904, Austrian ornithologist Carl Eduard Hellmayr designated the type locality as Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Today, the rusty-collared seedeater is placed in the genus Sporophila, which was first introduced by German ornithologist Jean Cabanis in 1844. The genus name combines the Ancient Greek words sporos, meaning "seed", and philos, meaning "-loving". The specific epithet collaris is Latin for "of the neck". Three subspecies of Sporophila collaris are currently recognised: S. c. ochrascen Hellmayr, 1904, found from Bolivia to south-central Brazil; S. c. collaris (Boddaert, 1783), found in east Brazil; and S. c. melanocephala (Vieillot, 1817), found in southwest Brazil, Paraguay and north Argentina, and also in southeast Brazil and Uruguay.
