''Lepidothrix'' is a genus 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 manakin family
Pipridae
The manakins are a family, Pipridae, of small suboscine passerine birds. The group contains some 54 species distributed through the American tropics. The name is from Middle Dutch ''mannekijn'' "little man" (also the source of the different bird ...
. Birds in the genus are predominantly found in South America, but one species, the
velvety manakin
The velvety manakin (''Lepidothrix velutina'') is a species of bird in the family Pipridae. It is found from Costa Rica to Ecuador. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest.
The velvety manakin was formerly considered ...
, also ranges into Central America. The females of this genus have green
plumage
Plumage ( "feather") is a layer of feathers that covers a bird and the pattern, colour, and arrangement of those feathers. The pattern and colours of plumage differ between species and subspecies and may vary with age classes. Within species, ...
with yellow bellies, as do some of the males. The remaining males have black plumage with white or blue crowns. Some also have yellow bellies or blue rumps.
[Snow, D. W. (2004). Family Pipridae (Manakins). Pp. 110-169 in: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., & Christie, D. A. eds (2004). ''Handbook of the Birds of the World.'' Vol. 9. Cotingas to Pipits and Wagtails. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. ]
Taxonomy
The genus ''Lepidothrix'' was introduced by the French naturalist
Charles Lucien Bonaparte
Charles Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte, 2nd Prince of Canino and Musignano (24 May 1803 – 29 July 1857), was a French naturalist and ornithologist. Lucien and his wife had twelve children, including Cardinal Lucien Bonaparte.
Life and career
...
in 1854. 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 ...
was subsequently designated as the
blue-capped manakin. The name ''Lepidothrix'' 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 pe ...
words λεπις ''lepis'', λεπιδος ''lepidos'' "scale, flake" and θριξ ''thrix'', τριχος ''trikhos'' "hair".
A new genus name ''Neolepidothrix'', was proposed in 2009 due to a suggestion that it was a
junior homonym
In biology, a homonym is a name for a taxon that is identical in spelling to another such name, that belongs to a different taxon.
The rule in the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature is that the first such name to be published is the se ...
of the extinct silverfish ''
Lepidotrix
''Lepidotrix'' is an extinct genus of wingless insect belonging to Zygentoma (silverfish and allies) in the family Lepidotrichidae. There is one described species in ''Lepidotrix'', ''L. piliferum/pillifera''. It is known from specimens found ...
'', however it was later shown that the original spelling of the silverfish genus was not same, so therefore the genera were not homonymous.
The genus contains nine species:
References
Bird genera
Taxa named by Charles Lucien Bonaparte
Taxonomy articles created by Polbot
{{Pipridae-stub