''Ispidina'' 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

insectivorous A robber fly eating a hoverfly An insectivore is a carnivorous animal or plant that eats insects. An alternative term is entomophage, which can also refer to the human practice of eating insects. The first vertebrate insectivores were ...

African

river kingfisher The river kingfishers or pygmy kingfishers, subfamily Alcedininae, are one of the three subfamilies of kingfishers. The river kingfishers are widespread through Africa and east and south Asia as far as Australia, with one species, the common ki ...

s. The genus was introduced by the German naturalist

Johann Jakob Kaup Johann Jakob von Kaup (10 April 1803 – 4 July 1873) was a German naturalist. A proponent of natural philosophy, he believed in an innate mathematical order in nature and he attempted biological classifications based on the Quinarian system. Kaup ...

in 1848 with the

African pygmy kingfisher The African pygmy kingfisher (''Ispidina picta'') is a small insectivorous kingfisher found in the Afrotropics, mostly in woodland habitats. Taxonomy The African pygmy kingfisher was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comt ...

(''Ispidina picta'') 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 genus is the

sister group 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 t ...

to the genus ''

Corythornis ''Corythornis'' is a genus of small African river kingfishers. A molecular phylogenetic study of the alcedinine kingfishers published in 2007 found that the genera as then defined did not form monophyletic groups. The species were subsequentl ...

'' containing four small African kingfishers.

Species

The two species in the genus are: These similar small kingfishers can be distinguished by the blue crown of the African pigmy kingfisher. They have different habit preferences and have mostly non-overlapping ranges. The slightly smaller African dwarf kingfisher occurs in tropical rainforests while the African pygmy kingfisher occurs in dry grassy woodland.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q2716296 Alcedininae Bird genera