''Climacteris'' is a genus of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

in the family

Climacteridae There are seven species of Australasian treecreeper in the passerine bird family Climacteridae. They are medium-small, mostly brown birds with patterning on their underparts, and all are endemic to Australia-New Guinea. They resemble, but are n ...

. These birds and the other members of the family, genus '' Cormobates'', are similar to Northern Hemisphere creepers,

Certhiidae The treecreepers are a family, Certhiidae, of small passerine birds, widespread in wooded regions of the Northern Hemisphere and sub-Saharan Africa. The family contains eleven species in two genera, ''Certhia'' and '' Salpornis''. Their plumage i ...

, in climbing helically up tree trunks looking for insect food. Differences from ''Cormobates'' are *''Climacteris'' species have black, slightly downcurved bills. *They have a rusty chest stripe in the female. (In ''Cormobates'' the female is marked on the face.) *They have simple vocal repertoires that are the same for both sexes. *They lay heavily marked pinkish eggs (Simpson and Day 1999). *They are

cooperative breeders Cooperative breeding is a social system characterized by alloparental care: offspring receive care not only from their parents, but also from additional group members, often called helpers. Cooperative breeding encompasses a wide variety of group ...

; male offspring of previous broods and sometimes other individuals help breeding pairs (Doerr 2003). It contains the following species: The Australian author

G. M. Mathews Gregory Macalister Mathews CBE FRSE FZS FLS (10 September 1876 – 27 March 1949) was an Australian-born amateur ornithologist who spent most of his later life in England. Life He was born in Biamble in New South Wales the son of Robert H. M ...

published new generic names in 1912, based on characteristics that distinguished two species from this genus, * ''Whitlocka'', to describe the black-tailed northwestern species, '' Climacteris melanurus''. The generic epithet honoured the ornithologist F. Lawson Whitlock.whitlocka
Jobling, J. A. (2018). Key to Scientific Names in Ornithology. In: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.) (2018). ''Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive''. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. (retrieved from www.hbw.com on 21 July 2018). *''Neoclima'', assigning the species ''Climacteris picumnus'', brown treecreeper, of Temminck as the type.neoclima
Jobling, J. A. (2018). Key to Scientific Names in Ornithology. In: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.) (2018). ''Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive''. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. (retrieved from www.hbw.com on 21 July 2018).

References

* * Peterson, Alan P. (Editor). 1999
''Zoological Nomenclature Resource'' (Zoonomen)
Accessed 2007-08-30. * Climacteridae Bird genera {{passeri-stub