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Renaming the San Pedrito
A Puerto Rican bird with a misleading scientific name
© Ryan Mandelbaum
The Puerto Rican Tody is a tiny green bird found only in Puerto Rico, where the species is called San Pedrito. But the scientific name for these birds is Todus mexicanus, despite the fact that they don’t live in Mexico — due to a mistake made by European scientists in the 1800s. People in Puerto Rico are working to get the San Pedrito an appropriate scientific name.
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Renaming the San Pedrito
This is BirdNote.
[Puerto Rican forest soundscape]
[San Pedrito/Puerto Rican Tody calls]
The Puerto Rican Tody is a tiny green bird found only in Puerto Rico, where the species is called San Pedrito.
[San Pedrito/Puerto Rican Tody calls]
But the scientific name for these birds is Todus mexicanus, despite the fact that they don’t live in Mexico.
People in Puerto Rico are working to get the San Pedrito an appropriate scientific name. José Gonzalez Diaz, who goes by Pepe, did years of detective work with his wife, Fela Collazo Torres, to sort out how the species got the wrong name in the first place.
José “Pepe” Gonzalez Diaz: That is the first question we have to resolve. We start with that question in our mind, and we didn't accept the idea of that epithet for our endemic bird, San Pedrito. So we keeping doing for 17 years search and research.
Pepe says the mistake was made by European scientists who mixed up tody specimens way back in the 1800s. He wants to rename the species Todus borinquensis. Borikén is the Indigenous Taíno name for Puerto Rico.
[San Pedrito/Puerto Rican Tody calls]
Learn more about efforts to rename the San Pedrito on the Threatened podcast. Listen in your favorite podcast app or at BirdNote.org. I’m Ari Daniel.
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Senior Producer: John Kessler
Content Director: Allison Wilson
Producer: Mark Bramhill
Managing Editor: Jazzi Johnson
Managing Producer: Conor Gearin
Bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. Puerto Rican Tody ML53830 recorded by José A. Colón López.
BirdNote’s theme was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
© 2023 BirdNote February 2023
Narrator: Ari Daniel
ID# PRTO-01-2023-02-06 PRTO-01
Conor Gearin
Writer