The short-crested flycatcher was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the flycatchers in the genusMuscicapa and coined the binomial nameMuscicapa ferox.[2] The specific epithet ferox is from Latin and means "brave", "wild" or "fierce".[3] Gmelin based his description primarily on "Le tyran de Cayenne" that had been described in 1760 by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson. Brisson had examined both male and female specimens that had been sent to France from Cayenne.[4][5] The short-crested flycatcher is now one of 22 flycatchers placed in the genus Myiarchus that was introduced in 1844 by Jean Cabanis.[6] Within the genus Myiarchus, the short-crested flycatcher is genetically closely related to the Panama flycatcher (Myiarchus panamensis).[7]
^Harvey, M.G.; et al. (2020). "The evolution of a tropical biodiversity hotspot". Science. 370 (6522): 1343–1348. doi:10.1126/science.aaz6970. hdl:10138/329703. A high resolution version of the phylogenetic tree in Figure 1 is available from the first author's website here.