Males have a green back, black throat and chest, and yellow-orange belly; females have a gray head and back with a yellow belly. The nominate subspecies occurs from Amazonian Brazil through parts of eastern Brazil and areas east of the Andes.
The male has a green back, black throat and central chest, and a yellow-orange belly. The female has a gray head and back with a yellow belly.
It is recorded as a non-migrant and sedentary species.
At Parque Estadual Intervales in southeastern Brazil, field observers recorded this trogon eating fruits and arthropods, with fruit appearing most often in the records. The opportunistic observations were collected from 1990 to 2002 and also include one unidentified flower eaten in the dry season.
At Tiputini in eastern Ecuador in July 1999, an adult female was seen excavating an arboreal termite nest about 40 m above ground. A separate nest near Kurintza, Pastaza Province, on 9 October 2013 contained one unhatched egg and one nestling. That termitarium was attached to a living Miconia napoana tree about 3 m above ground.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.