''Coccopygia'', is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

of small seed-eating birds in the family Estrildidae. They are distributed across central and southern

Africa Africa is the world's second-largest and second-most populous continent, after Asia in both cases. At about 30.3 million km2 (11.7 million square miles) including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of Earth's total surface area ...

Taxonomy

The genus ''Coccopygia'' was introduced in 1862 by the German naturalist

Ludwig Reichenbach Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach (8 January 1793 – 17 March 1879) was a German botanist and ornithologist. It was he who first requested Leopold Blaschka to make a set of glass marine invertebrate models for scientific education and museu ...

. The name combines the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

''kokkos'' meaning "scarlet" with ''-pugios'' meaning "-rumped". The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

was designated as the swee waxbill by

Richard Bowdler Sharpe Richard Bowdler Sharpe (22 November 1847 – 25 December 1909) was an English zoologist and ornithologist who worked as curator of the bird collection at the British Museum of natural history. In the course of his career he published several mono ...

in 1890. The genus ''Coccopygia'' is sister to the olivebacks in the genus ''

Nesocharis ''Nesocharis'' is a genus of small seed-eating birds in the family Estrildidae. They are found in Africa. Taxonomy The genus ''Nesocharis'' was introduced in 1903 by the English anthropologist Boyd Alexander with Shelley's oliveback as the type ...

''.

Species

The genus contains three

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

References

Bird genera Estrildidae Waxbills Taxa named by Ludwig Reichenbach {{Estrildidae-stub