''Poecilodryas'' is a
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 ...
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 Australasian robin family
Petroicidae
The bird family Petroicidae includes 51 species in 19 genera. All are endemic to Australasia: New Guinea, Australia, New Zealand and numerous Pacific Islands as far east as Samoa. For want of an accurate common name, the family is often called th ...
.
The genus was erected by the English ornithologist and bird artist
John Gould
John Gould (; 14 September 1804 – 3 February 1881) was an English ornithologist. He published a number of monographs on birds, illustrated by plates produced by his wife, Elizabeth Gould, and several other artists, including Edward Lear, ...
in 1865. 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 ...
was subsequently designated as the
buff-sided robin (''Poecilodryas cerviniventris''). The genus 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 p ...
''poikilos'' "variegated" with ''dryad'' "tree-nymph".
Species
The genus contains four
species
In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...
:
Formerly, some authorities also placed the following species (or subspecies) in the genus ''Poecilodryas'':
*
Brown-backed whistler (now ''Pachycephala modesta'' in the family
Pachycephalidae)
*
Golden monarch (nitidus) (now ''Carterornis nitida'' in the family
Monarchidae)
*
Black-throated robin (now ''Plesiodryas albonotata'')
[
]
References
Bird genera
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
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