''Megaceryle'' is a genus of very large
kingfisher
Kingfishers are a family, the Alcedinidae, of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, ...
s. They have a wide distribution in the Americas, Africa and southeast Asia.
The genus was erected 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. 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 ...
is a subspecies of the
crested kingfisher, ''Megaceryle lugubris guttulata''. ''Megaceryle'' is from 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 ...
''megas'', "great", and the existing genus ''
Ceryle''.
Species
The genus comprises four species:
All are specialist fish-eaters with prominent stiff
crests on their heads. They have dark grey or bluish-grey upperparts, largely unmarked in the two
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
species, but heavily spotted with white in the
Asia
Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...
n
crested kingfisher and the
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 ...
n
giant kingfisher
The giant kingfisher (''Megaceryle maxima'') is the largest kingfisher in Africa, where it is a resident breeding bird over most of the continent south of the Sahara Desert, other than the arid southwest.
Taxonomy
The first Species description, ...
. The underparts may be white or rufous, and all forms have a contrasting breast band except male
ringed kingfisher
The ringed kingfisher (''Megaceryle torquata'') is a large, conspicuous and noisy kingfisher bird commonly found along the lower Rio Grande valley in southeasternmost Texas in the United States through Central America to Tierra del Fuego in Sout ...
. The underpart pattern is always different for the two sexes of each species.
These birds nest in horizontal tunnels made in a river bank or sand bank. Both parents excavate the tunnel,
incubate the eggs and feed the young.
''Megaceryle'' kingfishers are often seen perched prominently on trees, posts, or other suitable watch-points close to water before plunging in head first after their prey, usually
fish
Fish are aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack limbs with digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and cartilaginous and bony fish as well as various extinct related groups. Approximately 95% of li ...
,
crustacean
Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean group ...
s or
frog
A frog is any member of a diverse and largely Carnivore, carnivorous group of short-bodied, tailless amphibians composing the order (biology), order Anura (ανοὐρά, literally ''without tail'' in Ancient Greek). The oldest fossil "proto-f ...
s, but sometimes aquatic
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 ...
s and other suitably sized animals.
Origins and taxonomy
The previous view that the ''Megaceryle'' kingfishers arose in the
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 a specialist fish-eating
Alcedinid ancestor which crossed the
Bering Strait and gave rise to this genus and the
American green kingfishers ''Chloroceryle'', with a large crested species later, in the
Pliocene
The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58[Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's five oceans, with an area of about . It covers approximately 20% of Earth's surface and about 29% of its water surface area. It is known to separate the " Old World" of Africa, Europe ...](_blank)
to give rise to the giant and crested kingfishers is probably wrong. Rather, it now seems that the genus probably originates in the Old World, possibly Africa, and the ancestor of the belted and ringed kingfishers made the ocean crossing
[Moyle, Robert G. (2006):]
A molecular phylogeny of kingfishers (Alcedinidae) with insights into early biogeographic history
. ''Auk
An auk or alcid is a bird of the family Alcidae in the order Charadriiformes. The alcid family includes the murres, guillemots, auklets, puffins, and murrelets. The word "auk" is derived from Icelandic ''álka'', from Old Norse ''alka'' (a ...
'' 123(2): 487–499.
The ''Megaceryle'' kingfishers were formerly placed in ''Ceryle'' with the
pied kingfisher
The pied kingfisher (''Ceryle rudis'') is a species of water kingfisher widely distributed across Africa and Asia. Originally described by Carl Linnaeus in 1758, it has five recognised subspecies. Its black and white plumage and crest, as well as ...
, but the latter is genetically closer to the American green kingfishers.
References
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1089134
Bird genera