''Manacus'' is a genus of

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 th ...

birds in the

manakin The manakins are a family, Pipridae, of small suboscine passerine birds. The group contains some 54 species distributed through the American tropics. The name is from Middle Dutch ''mannekijn'' "little man" (also the source of the different bird ...

family which are found in the forests of tropical mainland Central and

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...

, and on

Trinidad Trinidad is the larger and more populous of the two major islands of Trinidad and Tobago. The island lies off the northeastern coast of Venezuela and sits on the continental shelf of South America. It is often referred to as the southernmos ...

and

Tobago Tobago () is an List of islands of Trinidad and Tobago, island and Regions and municipalities of Trinidad and Tobago, ward within the Trinidad and Tobago, Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. It is located northeast of the larger island of Trini ...

. The

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

''Manacus'' was introduced by the French zoologist

Mathurin Jacques Brisson Mathurin Jacques Brisson (; 30 April 1723 – 23 June 1806) was a French zoologist and natural philosopher. Brisson was born at Fontenay-le-Comte. The earlier part of his life was spent in the pursuit of natural history; his published works ...

in 1760 with the white-bearded manakin (''Manacus manacus'') 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 specime ...

. The name ''manacus'' is from the Dutch ''manneken'' "pretty little thing". The genus contains four species: The "Almirante manakin" (''Manacus'' x ''cerritus'') are stereotyped hybrids between the white-collared and the golden-collared species, found in

Bocas del Toro Province Bocas del Toro (; meaning "Mouth of the Bull") is a province of Panama. Its area is 4,643.9 square kilometers, comprising the mainland and nine main islands. The province consists of the Bocas del Toro Archipelago, Bahía Almirante (Almirante B ...

Panama Panama ( , ; es, link=no, Panamá ), officially the Republic of Panama ( es, República de Panamá), is a transcontinental country spanning the southern part of North America and the northern part of South America. It is bordered by Co ...

(Brumfield ''et al.'', 2001; McDonald ''et al.'', 2001). These are small, compact, short-tailed birds with a heavy hooked bill and orange legs. The males have brightly coloured plumage and long puffed throat feathers, whereas the females are the typical manakin dull olive hue. The females lay two eggs in a shallow cup nest in a tree. Nest-building, incubation for 18–21 days, and care of the young are undertaken by the female alone, since manakins do not form stable pairs. ''Manacus'' manakins feed low in the trees on

fruit In botany, a fruit is the seed-bearing structure in flowering plants that is formed from the ovary after flowering. Fruits are the means by which flowering plants (also known as angiosperms) disseminate their seeds. Edible fruits in particu ...

and some

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 ...

s, both plucked from the foliage in flight. Like some other manakin species, this genus has spectacular courtship rituals, in which the males give communal displays in a specially prepared lek. The males jump with their throat feathers erected to form a beard, and give whistles together with the characteristic loud snaps (like a breaking twig) and various buzzing, rustling and whiffling noises made with the wings. The males of three very closely related species, the white-collared manakin of the Caribbean slopes of Central America, and its

Pacific The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contine ...

counterparts, the orange-collared and golden-collared manakins, have heavily modified wings with the five outer primaries very narrow for their outer half, and the inner primaries thickened and bowed.

References

Sources

* Brumfield, Robb T.; Jernigan, Robert W.; McDonald, David B.; Braun, Michael J. (2001): Evolutionary implications of divergent clines in an avian (''Manacus'': Aves) hybrid zone. ''

Evolution Evolution is change in the heritable characteristics of biological populations over successive generations. These characteristics are the expressions of genes, which are passed on from parent to offspring during reproduction. Variation ...

'' 55(10): 2070–2087
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* McDonald, David B.; Clay, Robert P.; Brumfield, Robb T. & Braun, Michael J. (2001): Sexual selection on plumage and behavior in an avian hybrid zone: experimental tests of male-male interactions. ''

'' 55(7): 1443–1451
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References

Sources

Further reading