''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. Kau ...

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 specim ...

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 pe ...

''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 are ...

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 ...

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 formal description o ...

. 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 animal, aquatic, craniate, gill-bearing animals that lack Limb (anatomy), limbs with Digit (anatomy), digits. Included in this definition are the living hagfish, lampreys, and Chondrichthyes, cartilaginous and bony fish as we ...

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapoda, decapods, ostracoda, seed shrimp, branchiopoda, branchiopods, argulidae, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopoda, isopods, barnacles, copepods, ...

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 pa ...

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. ...

from a specialist fish-eating Alcedinid ancestor which crossed the Bering Strait and gave rise to this genus and the

American green kingfisher The American green kingfishers are the kingfisher genus ''Chloroceryle'', which are native to tropical Central and South America, with one species extending north to south Texas. Species There are four species: The American green kingfishers ...

s ''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 2.58Atlantic 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 ...

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, but the latter is genetically closer to the American green kingfishers.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1089134 Bird genera