 The American zoologist Austin Hobart Clark gave the Lesser Antillean macaw its scientific name, "Ara guadeloupensis", in 1905, based on the contemporary accounts, and he also cited a 1765 color plate as possibly depicting this species.He wrote that it was different in several ways from the superficially similar scarlet macaw ("A. macao"), as well as the green-winged macaw ("A. chloropterus") and the Cuban macaw ("A. tricolor").Clark suggested the species might also have existed on the islands of Dominica and Martinique, based on accounts of red macaws there as well as on Guadeloupe.