The Marañón sparrow (Arremon nigriceps) is a passerine of bird in the New World sparrow family Passerellidae that is found in the Marañón River basin of northern Peru. The species was formerly considered to be conspecific with the black-capped sparrow (Arremon abeillei).
Taxonomy
The Marañón sparrow was formally described in 1880 by the Polish zoologist Władysław Taczanowski based on a single specimen that had been collected by the Polish zoologist Jan Sztolcman at Callacatein in the Department of Cajamarca of northern Peru. Taczanowski coined the binomial nameArremon nigriceps where the specific epithet combines the Latinniger meaning "black" with -ceps meaning "-headed".[2][3] This sparrow was formerly considered by many ornithologists to be a subspecies of the black-capped sparrow (Arremon abeillei) but is now treated as a separate species based on the differences in plumage and vocalizations as well as the significant genetic divergence.[4][5]