''Trogon'' 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 ...

Coraciimorphae Coraciimorphae is a clade of birds that contains the order Coliiformes (mousebirds) and the clade Cavitaves (a large assemblage of birds that includes woodpeckers, kingfishers and trogons).Naish, D. (2012). "Birds." Pp. 379-423 in Brett-Surman, ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

s in the

trogon The trogons and quetzals are birds in the order Trogoniformes which contains only one family, the Trogonidae. The family Trogonidae contains 46 species in seven genera. The fossil record of the trogons dates back 49 million years to the Early E ...

family. Its members occur in forests and woodlands of the

Americas The Americas, which are sometimes collectively called America, are a landmass comprising the totality of North and South America. The Americas make up most of the land in Earth's Western Hemisphere and comprise the New World. Along with th ...

, ranging from southeastern

Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...

to northern

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

. They have large eyes, stout hooked bills, short wings, and long, squared-off, strongly graduated tails; black and white tail-feather markings form distinctive patterns on the underside. Males have richly colored metallic plumage, metallic on the upperparts. Although many have brightly coloured bare eye-rings, they lack the colorful patches of bare facial skin in their African counterparts, ''

Apaloderma ''Apaloderma'' is a genus of birds in the family Trogonidae. The name is a compound word composed of two Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek ...

''. Females and young are duller and sometimes hard to identify in the field. Eggs are white or bluish-white, unlike the pale blue eggs of

quetzal Quetzals () are strikingly colored birds in the trogon family. They are found in forests, especially in humid highlands, with the five species from the genus ''Pharomachrus'' being exclusively Neotropical, while a single species, the eared quet ...

s. See the family account for further details.

Taxonomy

The

''Trogon'' 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 green-backed trogon (''Trogon viridis'') 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 of the genus 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 ...

τρωγων ''trōgōn'' for "fruit-eating" or "gnawing". The name had previously been used by the German naturalist

Paul Möhring Paul Heinrich Gerhard Möhring (also Paul Mohr; 21 July 1710 in Jever – 28 October 1792) was a German physician, botanist and zoologist. He studied medicine in Danzig and Wittenberg, and following graduation (1733), he settled as a general pr ...

in 1752 for the

blue-crowned trogon The blue-crowned trogon (''Trogon curucui'') is a species of bird in the family Trogonidae, the quetzals and trogons. It is found in Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Paraguay, and Peru. As with all trogons, this species is sexual ...

(''Trogon curucui'').

Species

The genus contains 20 species:

References

Trogonidae Bird genera {{Trogoniformes-stub ca:Trogon