Psittacus, Linnaeus, 1758

Smith, Brian Tilston, Thom, Gregory & Joseph, Leo, 2024, Revised Evolutionary And Taxonomic Synthesis For Parrots (Order: Psittaciformes) Guided By Phylogenomic Analysis, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2024 (468), pp. 1-87 : 22

Psittacus

Psittacus are predominantly gray-plumaged parrots with red tails and prominent bare white facial skin. Along with Australian Nymphicus and Melopsittacus , they are among the world’s most familiar parrots, and are among the parrots most heavily harvested for the captive bird trade ( Mulliken, 1995). Their ethology has been intensely studied (e.g., Giret et al., 2009, Pepperberg et al., 2013). Psittacus was long treated as monotypic, but two species are now conventionally recognized, P. erithacus and P.timneh . In the phylogenomic tree, the sister relationship between the two was stable and dated to the early Pleistocene (1.9 Mya; fig. 3). Relationships within and among populations of the two species have also been addressed through mitochondrial DNA sequences by Melo and O’Ryan (2007).