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West Mexican Chachalaca is endemic to the deciduous forests of southwestern Mexico, from Jalisco south to Chiapas. This is one of four species of chachalaca that occur in Mexico, which have had a complicated taxonomic history; some earlier authors considered West Mexican Chachalaca to be a subspecies of Plain Chachalaca (Ortalis vetula), or classified Rufous-bellied Chachalaca (Ortalis wagleri) as a subspecies of West Mexican Chachalaca. The distributions of these species have little distributional overlap, instead the different species replace each other geographically. The biology of West Mexican Chachalaca is similar to that of other species of chachalacas.