American wigeon [SEP] parent taxon
American wigeon
The American wigeon ("Mareca americana"), also called a baldpate, is a species of dabbling duck found in North America. Formerly assigned to "Anas", this species is classified with the other wigeons in the dabbling duck genus "Mareca". It is the New World counterpart of the Eurasian wigeon. "Mareca" is from the Brazilian-Portuguese word "Marréco" for a small duck and "americana" refers to America.
Description.
The American wigeon is a medium-
Taxon in disguise
In bacteriology, a taxon in disguise is a species, genus or higher unit of biological classification whose evolutionary history reveals has evolved from another unit of similar or lower rank, making the parent unit paraphyletic. This happens when rapid evolution makes a new species appear radically different from the ancestral group, so that it is not (initially) recognised as belonging to the parent phylogenetic group, leaving the latter an evolutionary grade.
While the term is from bacteriology, parallel examples are found throughout the tree of