The red-capped cardinal (Paroaria gularis) is a small species of bird in the tanager family Thraupidae. It is found in South America. Taxonomy In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the red-capped cardinal in the supplement to his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in "America". He used the French name Le cardinal d'Amérique and the Latin name Cardinalis americanis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson in his Ornithologie. One of these was the red-capped cardinal. Linnaeus included a terse description, coined the binomial name Tanagra gularis and cited Brisson's work. The specific name gularis is Latin for "of the throat". The type locality has been restricted to French Guiana. This species is now placed in the genus Paroaria that was introduced by the French ornithologist Charles Lucien Bonaparte in 1832. The genus Paroaria is classified in the family Thraupidae, unlike the cardinals proper which are in the Cardinalidae. The masked cardinal was formerly considered conspecific with the red-capped cardinal. The masked cardinal markedly differs from the red-capped cardinal by the black ear-coverts and the red (not black) lower throat and upper chest. Additionally, its lower mandible is typically whitish, but this is not entirely consistent, as it occasionally is pale flesh-coloured. This distinctive taxon was determined a different species, as suggested by the lack of hybridization with P. g. gularis in the limited area of overlap in southern Venezuela. There are two subspecies: P. g. gularis (Linnaeus, 1766) (eastern Colombia to eastern Peru and through the Guianas to central Brazil) P. g. cervicalis Sclater, PL, 1862 (north east Bolivia and south west Brazil Description The adult red-capped cardinal is long and weighs about . The nominate subspecies has a crimson head, blackish lores and ocular region, and shiny black upperparts, apart from a white partial collar extending up the neck sides from the white underparts. The throat is black, extending to a point on the upper chest. The upper mandible is black, while the lower is pale flesh-coloured. The legs are dark grey (almost black) and the iris is brownish-orange. In pattern the juvenile resemble the adults, but the