The true koels, ''Eudynamys'', are 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 ...

cuckoo Cuckoos are birds in the Cuculidae family, the sole taxon in the order Cuculiformes . The cuckoo family includes the common or European cuckoo, roadrunners, koels, malkohas, couas, coucals and anis. The coucals and anis are sometimes separ ...

s from

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 are ...

, Australia and the

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 ...

. They are large

sexually dimorphic Sexual dimorphism is the condition where the sexes of the same animal and/or plant species exhibit different morphological characteristics, particularly characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most ani ...

cuckoos that eat fruits and insects and have loud distinctive calls. They are brood parasites, laying their eggs in the nests of other species.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Eudynamys'' was introduced in 1827 by the English naturalists Nicholas Vigors and

Thomas Horsfield Thomas Horsfield (May 12, 1773 – July 24, 1859) was an American physician and naturalist who worked extensively in Indonesia, describing numerous species of plants and animals from the region. He was later a curator of the East India Company ...

. The 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 ...

''eu'' meaning "fine" with ''dunamis'' meaning "power" or "strength". 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 designated as the

Pacific koel The Pacific koel (''Eudynamys orientalis''), also known as the eastern koel or formerly Common Koel, is a species of cuckoo in the family Cuculidae. In Australia, it is colloquially known as the ''rainbird'' or ''stormbird'', as its call is usual ...

George Robert Gray George Robert Gray FRS (8 July 1808 – 6 May 1872) was an English zoologist and author, and head of the ornithological section of the British Museum, now the Natural History Museum, in London for forty-one years. He was the younger brother ...

in 1840. A molecular genetic study by Sorenson and Payne (2005) found that the closest relative of ''Eudynamys'' is the dwarf koel (''Microdynamis parva''), and beyond that the

thick-billed cuckoo The thick-billed cuckoo (''Pachycoccyx audeberti'') is a species of cuckoo in the family Cuculidae. It is monotypic within the genus ''Pachycoccyx''. It can easily be distinguished from other brood parasitic cuckoo species by its very thick bill, ...

(''Pachycoccyx audeberti''). They found that the

long-tailed cuckoo The Pacific long-tailed cuckoo (''Urodynamis taitensis''), also known as the long-tailed cuckoo, long-tailed koel, sparrow hawk, home owl, screecher, screamer or in Māori, is a species of the Cuculidae bird family (the cuckoos). It is a migrat ...

(''Urodynamis taitensis'') of

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 smaller islands. It is the sixth-largest island count ...

and the Pacific, which had earlier been placed in ''Eudynamys'' as ''E. taitensis'' and sometimes called the long-tailed koel, was more distantly related, along with other members of the tribe Cuculini, including the white-crowned cuckoo (''Cacomantis leucolophus''), also known as the white-crowned koel. However, not all the evidence for the relationships was very strong and further research was required.Sorenson, Michael D.; Payne, Robert B. (2005). "A molecular genetic analysis of cuckoo phylogeny". In Payne, Robert B. ''The Cuckoos''. Oxford University Press. pp. 90, 93. .

Species

The

taxonomy Taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification. A taxonomy (or taxonomical classification) is a scheme of classification, especially a hierarchical classification, in which things are organized into groups or types. ...

of the

common koel The common koels are three species of cuckoos. They have commonly been considered conspecific Biological specificity is the tendency of a characteristic such as a behavior or a biochemical variation to occur in a particular species. Biochemist Lin ...

complex Complex commonly refers to: * Complexity, the behaviour of a system whose components interact in multiple ways so possible interactions are difficult to describe ** Complex system, a system composed of many components which may interact with each ...

is difficult and remains a matter of dispute, with some only recognizing a single species (common koel, ''Eudynamys scolopaceus'', with ''melanorhynchus'' and ''orientalis'' as subspecies), two species (common koel, ''Eudynamys scolopaceus'', with ''orientalis'' as a subspecies, and black-billed koel, ''Eudynamys melanorhynchus'') or three species (as done below).

Sexual Dimorphism

The female koel's plumage is banded and speckled in shades of brown. The evolutionary function is to camouflage her approach to her host's nest and enable her brood parasitism to go undetected.

Noisy miner The noisy miner (''Manorina melanocephala'') is a bird in the honeyeater family, Meliphagidae, and is endemic to eastern and southeastern Australia. This miner is a grey bird, with a black head, orange-yellow beak and feet, a distinctive yellow ...

and wattle birds have been observed feeding their fledglings. The male's

plumage is black, like a raven. They are of a similar size to ravens and are known to have territories that overlap with ravens. They have also been observed being mobbed by noisy miners and wattle birds in the same way as ravens (egg predators) are. The male koel may be a raven

mimic MIMIC, known in capitalized form only, is a former simulation computer language developed 1964 by H. E. Petersen, F. J. Sansom and L. M. Warshawsky of Systems Engineering Group within the Air Force Materiel Command at the Wright-Patterson AFB in ...

enabling the female to approach the host's nest, either deliberately or opportunistically, while the host flock is engaged in (distracted) mobbing the male.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q262536 Cuculidae *