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Taxonomy: Amazona kawalli Grantsau and Camargo, 1989, Mato Piri, right bank of Rio Jurunaacute; below Eirunep eacute;, Amazonas, Brazil. Taxonomic status of this recently described form was questioned, and it was widely considered to be an aberrant form of A. farinosa, but scrutiny of further evidence has convincingly shown it to be a valid species. Monotypic.
The imperial Amazon is a spectacular parrot and the national bird of Dominica (4). It is the largest member of the genus Amazona, and is one of the rarest parrots in the world (5). The two sexes are similar in appearance, with a dark maroon-purple head featuring some greenish-blue feathers; the ear-coverts are reddish-brown and the cheeks are maroon. The upperparts of this parrot are green; the wings have typical red wing spots, as with all Amazona, and long flight feathers that become purplish-blue at the tips (6) (7). The purple feathers of the underparts have blackish fringes, creating a scaled appearance. The reddish tail has a greenish-blue tip (2) (6). Juveniles are generally similar to adults, but typically have a duller-coloured plumage, and brown rather than red irises (6) (7). A loud trumpet-like call is produced in flight, and a range of squawks and whistles, particularly a high-pitched “weep-weep-weep”, are emitted at other times (2) (7).
Background: Duarte and Caparroz (1995) suggested that the Yellow-faced parrot (Amazona xanthops Spix 1824), a species endemic to eastern and central Brazil, exhibited substantial karyotypic differences not only compared to other species in the genus Amazona, but also to all other New World parrots examined. Duarte and Caparroz (1995) used these differences to suggest that A. xanthops should be excluded from the genus Amazona and placed in the monotypic genus Salvatoria, as first proposed by Ribeiro (1920) based on bill and plumage characteristics.
Although A. xanthops did not form a monophyletic group together with three other Amazona species based on a phylogenetic analysis of 307 bp of the mitochondrial cytochrome b (cyt b) region (Birt et al., 1992), a clear understanding of the relationships between A. xanthops and other New World parrots was lacking at that time, and the species was maintained in Amazona.
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