The typical honeycreepers form a genus ''Cyanerpes'' of small birds in the tanager family
Thraupidae
The tanagers (singular ) comprise the bird family Thraupidae, in the order Passeriformes. The family has a Neotropical distribution and is the second-largest family of birds. It represents about 4% of all avian species and 12% of the Neotropica ...
. They are found in the tropical
New World
The term ''New World'' is often used to mean the majority of Earth's Western Hemisphere, specifically the Americas."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: Oxford University Press, p. 3 ...
from Mexico south to Brazil. They occur in the
forest canopy
In biology, the canopy is the aboveground portion of a plant cropping or crop, formed by the collection of individual plant crowns.
In forest ecology, canopy also refers to the upper layer or habitat zone, formed by mature tree crowns an ...
, and, as the name implies, they are specialist
nectar
Nectar is a sugar-rich liquid produced by plants in glands called nectaries or nectarines, either within the flowers with which it attracts pollinating animals, or by extrafloral nectaries, which provide a nutrient source to animal mutualists ...
feeders with long curved
bills.
The four ''Cyanerpes'' species have colourful legs, long wings and a short tail. The males are typically glossy purple-blue and the females greenish.
Taxonomy and species list
The genus ''Cyanerpes'' was introduced in 1899 by the American ornithologist
Harry C. Oberholser
Harry Church Oberholser (June 25, 1870 – December 25, 1963) was an American ornithologist.
Biography
Harry Oberholser was born to Jacob and Lavera S. Oberholser on June 25, 1870, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Columbia University, but did ...
with the
red-legged honeycreeper
The red-legged honeycreeper (''Cyanerpes cyaneus'') is a small songbird species in the tanager family (biology), family (Thraupidae). It is found in the tropics, tropical New World from southern Mexico south to Peru, Bolivia and central Brazil, T ...
as 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 ...
. 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 ...
''kuanos'' meaning "dark-blue" and ''herpēs'' meaning "creeper".
There are two other tanagers with honeycreeper in their common name: the
green honeycreeper
The green honeycreeper (''Chlorophanes spiza'') is a small bird in the tanager family. It is found in the tropical New World from southern Mexico south to Brazil, and on Trinidad. It is the only member of the genus ''Chlorophanes''.
Taxonomy
Th ...
in the
monospecific
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 ''Chlorophanes'' and the
golden-collared honeycreeper in the monospecific genus ''Iridophanes''.
[ These two species are ]sister taxa
In phylogenetics, a sister group or sister taxon, also called an adelphotaxon, comprises the closest relative(s) of another given unit in an evolutionary tree.
Definition
The expression is most easily illustrated by a cladogram:
Taxon A and ...
and belong to the subfamily
In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end subfamily botanical names with "-oideae", and zoologi ...
Hemithraupinae rather than to Dacninae with the members of ''Cyanerpes''.
The genus contains four species:
Eggs
A commonly repeated, yet false, belief about the various honeycreeper species is that some of them lay black eggs. This idea was first made known in the scientific community with the 1899 publication of Nehrkorn's egg catalog; Nehrkorn's claim was cited in ornithological literature for many years without verification, but by the 1940s it was established that none of the members of ''Cyanerpes'' lay such eggs.
References
External links
Honeycreeper videos, photos and sounds
on the Internet Bird Collection
{{Authority control
Taxa named by Harry C. Oberholser