Plain Thornbird Phacellodomus inornatus is split from Rufous-fronted Thornbird P. rufifrons (Clements 2007:277)

Summary: The Plain Thornbird of much of Venezuela is now considered a separate species from the widely disjunct Rufous-fronted Thornbird mainly of south-central parts of South America.

Details: Unlike most taxa subsumed under Phacellodomus rufifrons (sensu Peters 1951, Wolters 1977), P. inornatus was originally described as specifically distinct (Ridgway 1887) and said to be “a very distinct species” from P. rufifrons. Despite its longtime subspecies, treatment, P. inornatus has been suggested for decades to be specifically distinct based on morphology (Ridgely and Greenfield 2001), with the split enacted by Hilty (2003) and Gill and Wright (2006, IOC v.1.0). Now, vocalizations have been shown to differ (Boesman 2016 [No. 95]) and it is genetically divergent from the southern subspecies (Corbett et al. 2020), leading WGAC and Clements et al. (2023) to agree with the two-species treatment enacted by del Hoyo and Collar (2016), although further study of the complex may result in subsequent species-level changes to the taxa remaining in the rufifrons complex. A 2003 SACC proposal to split P. inornatus (https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCprop41.htm) did not pass due to insufficient published data.

English names: The English name Plain Thornbird aptly describes Phacellodomus inornatus and has a long history of use, aligning with Hilty (2003), HBW and BirdLife International (2022) and Gill and Wright (2006, IOC v.1.0).