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The genus ''Paradisaea'' consists of six species of birds-of-paradise (family Paradisaeidae). The genus is found on the island of
New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; id, Papua, or , historically ) is the world's second-largest island with an area of . Located in Oceania in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is separated from Australia by the wide Torres ...
as well as the nearby islands groups of the
Aru Islands The Aru Islands Regency ( id, Kabupaten Kepulauan Aru) is a group of about 95 low-lying islands in the Maluku Islands of eastern Indonesia. It also forms a regency of Maluku Province, with a land area of . At the 2011 Census the Regency had a po ...
,
D'Entrecasteaux Islands D'Entrecasteaux Islands () are situated near the eastern tip of New Guinea in the Solomon Sea in Milne Bay Province of Papua New Guinea. The group spans a distance of , has a total land area of approximately and is separated from the Papua New G ...
and
Raja Ampat Islands Raja Ampat, or the ''Four Kings'', is an archipelago located off the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula on the island of New Guinea, in Indonesia's Southwest Papua province. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and shoals surrounding ...
. The species inhabit a range of forest types from sea level to mid-montane forests. Several species have highly restricted distributions, and all species have disjunct distributions. A 2009 study examining the
mitochondrial DNA Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA or mDNA) is the DNA located in mitochondria, cellular organelles within eukaryotic cells that convert chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, such as adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Mitochondrial DN ...
of the family found that the ''Paradisaea'' birds-of-paradise were in a clade with the genus '' Cicinnurus''. It showed that the blue bird-of-paradise was a sister taxon to all the other species in this genus. All are large, and
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 anim ...
. The
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, ...
of the males includes characteristic grossly elongated flank plumes (which emerge from beneath the wings and strictly speaking are flank plumes pectoral plumes), and a pair of wire-like feathers emerging from the end of the tail. The flank plumes are used during breeding displays. The name, ''Paradisaea'', is the Latinized form of "paradise". The local name in Indonesia is ''cenderawasih''.


Taxonomy

The genus ''Paradisaea'' was introduced by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in 1758 in the tenth edition of his ''
Systema Naturae ' (originally in Latin written ' with the ligature æ) is one of the major works of the Swedish botanist, zoologist and physician Carl Linnaeus (1707–1778) and introduced the Linnaean taxonomy. Although the system, now known as binomial nom ...
''. The genus name is from
Late Latin Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in the ...
''paradisus'' meaning "paradise". 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( ...
was designated as the greater bird-of-paradise (''Paradisaea apoda'') by
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.


Species

The genus contains six species.


Notes


References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q927832 Bird genera