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The water kingfishers or Cerylinae are one of the three subfamilies of kingfishers, and are also known as the cerylid kingfishers. All six
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 are in this subfamily. These are all specialist fish-eating species, unlike many representatives of the other two subfamilies, and it is likely that they are all descended from fish-eating kingfishers which founded populations in the New World. It was believed that the entire group evolved in the Americas, but this seems not to be true. The original ancestor possibly evolved in
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 ...
– at any rate in the Old World – and the ''Chloroceryle'' species are the youngest ones.


Phylogeny

Evidence from
molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...
studies suggests that the Cerylinae originated in Asia and have colonised the New World on two occasions: the first time was around 8 million years ago by the ''Chloroceryle'' and the second time was around 1.9 million years ago by the common ancestor of the
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 ...
and the
belted kingfisher The belted kingfisher (''Megaceryle alcyon'') is a large, conspicuous water kingfisher, native to North America. All kingfishers were formerly placed in one family, Alcedinidae, but recent research suggests that this should be divided into three ...
in the genus ''
Megaceryle ''Megaceryle'' is a genus of very large kingfishers. They have a wide distribution in the Americas, Africa and southeast Asia. The genus was erected by the German naturalist Johann Jakob Kaup in 1848. The type species is a subspecies of the cr ...
''. The subfamily Cerylinae contains nine kingfisher species and is divided into three genera:


References

* Fry, K & Fry, H. C. (1999): ''Kingfishers, Bee-eaters and Rollers'', new edition. Christopher Helm Publishers. * Moyle, Robert G. (2006): A Molecular Phylogeny of Kingfishers (Alcedinidae) With Insights into Early Biogeographic History. '' Auk'' 123(2): 487–499
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External links


Water kingfisher videos
on the Internet Bird Collection {{Taxonbar, from=Q1196087 * Kingfishers Taxa named by Ludwig Reichenbach