First Guyana records, natural history and systematics of the White‐naped Seedeater <i>Dolospingus fringilloides</i>

We report the first records of the White‐naped Seedeater Dolospingus fringilloides for Guyana, provide new information on its natural history and plumage sequences, and clarify its systematic relationships based on DNA sequence data. Dolospingus is a rare and patchily distributed endemic of white‐sand scrub of the Guianan shield region. Phylogenetic analyses of a broad sampling of emberizine cytochrome b sequences identified a ‘seed finch’ clade consisting of the genera Sporophila , Oryzoborus and Dolospingus with 100% bootstrap support. More intensive maximum‐likelihood (ML) and Bayesian analyses conducted with a reduced data set indicated strong support for the same ‘seed finch’ clade, but could not distinguish the three genera. In the optimal ML trees, Dolospingus and Oryzoborus were nested within Sporophila , and the two Oryzoborus sequences did not cluster together. However, resolution within the seed‐finch clade was weak, so the possibility that all three genera are monophyletic cannot be excluded on the basis of the available molecular data. Thus, whether to group these genera on the basis of genetic similarity or retain them on the basis of diagnostic bill and skull differences will remain a matter of preference until a more fully resolved phylogeny of the seed‐finch clade is achieved.