The Eurylaimidae are a family of

suboscine The Tyranni (suboscines) are a suborder of passerine birds that includes more than 1,000 species, the large majority of which are South American. It is named after the type genus '' Tyrannus''. These have a different anatomy of the syrinx mus ...

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped'), which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines are distinguished from other orders of birds by t ...

birds that occur from the eastern

Himalayas The Himalayas, or Himalaya (; ; ), is a mountain range in Asia, separating the plains of the Indian subcontinent from the Tibetan Plateau. The range has some of the planet's highest peaks, including the very highest, Mount Everest. Over 100 ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

and the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. The family previously included the

sapayoa The sapayoa or broad-billed sapayoa (''Sapayoa aenigma'') is a suboscine passerine found in lowland rainforests in Panama and north-western South America. As the epithet ''aenigma'' ("the enigma") implies, its relationships have long been elusive ...

from the

Neotropics The Neotropical realm is one of the eight biogeographic realms constituting Earth's land surface. Physically, it includes the tropics, tropical Ecoregion#Terrestrial, terrestrial ecoregions of the Americas and the entire South American temperat ...

, the asities from

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

, and the

Calyptomenidae Calyptomenidae is a family of passerine birds found in Africa, the Malay Peninsula The Malay Peninsula ( Malay: ''Semenanjung Tanah Melayu'') is a peninsula in Mainland Southeast Asia. The landmass runs approximately north–south, and a ...

from Africa and Asia, but these are now separated into distinct families.

Description

Many of the species are brightly coloured birds that present broad heads, large eyes and a hooked, flat and broad beak. They range from 13 to 28 centimetres in length, and live in the dense canopies of wet forests, allowing them to hide despite their brightly coloured plumage. The plumage of the juvenile eurylaimids are similar to those of the adults, differing in being duller and shorter-winged and shorter-tailed in some cases.

Behaviour and ecology

They are for the most part insectivorous and carnivorous. Prey taken includes

insect Insects (from Latin ') are pancrustacean hexapod invertebrates of the class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body ( head, thorax and abdomen), three pairs ...

spider Spiders ( order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight legs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and rank seventh in total species ...

centipede Centipedes (from New Latin , "hundred", and Latin , " foot") are predatory arthropods belonging to the class Chilopoda (Ancient Greek , ''kheilos'', lip, and New Latin suffix , "foot", describing the forcipules) of the subphylum Myriapoda, an ...

s, and

millipede Millipedes are a group of arthropods that are characterised by having two pairs of jointed legs on most body segments; they are known scientifically as the class Diplopoda, the name derived from this feature. Each double-legged segment is a resu ...

s, as well as

lizard Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with over 7,000 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica, as well as most oceanic island chains. The group is paraphyletic since it excludes the snakes and Amphisbaenia alt ...

s and

tree frog A tree frog (or treefrog) is any species of frog that spends a major portion of its lifespan in trees, known as an arboreal state. Several lineages of frogs among the Neobatrachia have given rise to treefrogs, although they are not closely rela ...

s. Prey is obtained by sallying from a perch to snatch it in flight, and gleaning the prey off leaves and branches while flying. Some species may take some fruit, but only the green broadbills of the genus ''

Calyptomena ''Calyptomena'' is a genus of birds in the family Calyptomenidae. The name is a combination of two Greek words: ''kaluptos'' meaning "covered", and ''mēnē'', meaning "moon". Established by Thomas Stamford Raffles in 1822, the genus contains th ...

'' and the

Grauer's broadbill Grauer's broadbill (''Pseudocalyptomena graueri''), also known as the African green broadbill, is a species of bird in the family Eurylaimidae, and is monotypic within the genus ''Pseudocalyptomena''. Its name commemorates the German zoologist ...

are primarily frugivores (which also take some insects). They are generally gregarious, with many species moving about in flocks of about 20 individuals. They attach their purse-shaped nests to suspended vines, and leave a tail of fibres hanging below it. This gives the nest the appearance of being random debris caught in the tree, an effect further enhanced by the birds covering the nest with lichen and spider webs. Broadbills typically lay two to three eggs.

Taxonomy and systematics

The family Eurylaimidae was introduced in 1831 (as Eurylaimes) by the French naturalist René Lesson. A study by Carl Oliveros and colleagues published in 2019 determined the phylogenetic relationships of the Eurylaimidae to other families in the

Eurylaimides Eurylaimides (Old World suboscines) is a clade of passerine birds that are distributed in tropical regions around the Indian Ocean and a single American species, the sapayoa. This group is divided into five families The families listed here are ...

(Old World suboscines): A study published in 2017 determined the following phylogenetic relationships among the Eurylaimidae: The family includes nine species of which five are each placed in their own

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus:

Notes

References

External links

Broadbill videos
on the Internet Bird Collection {{Taxonbar, from=Q214621 Tyranni Bird families Taxa named by René Lesson