Brisbin & Mowbray (2020) write: 'Birds in the Caribbean with a white or predominately white callus ("shield"), distributed from the Greater Antilles south to northwestern Venezuela, formerly were recognized as a separate species, Caribbean Coot F. caribaea. Birds with red and white "shields" do not mate assortatively where they overlap (McNair and Cramer-Burke 2006), however. With the further recognition that birds with white shields occur, albeit at low frequency, across continental North America (Roberson and Baptista 1988), red- and white-shielded birds now are considered to be simply morphs of a single species (Chesser et al. 2016), and are not separate taxa.'