''Colaptes'' is 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 ...

of birds in the woodpecker family

Picidae Woodpeckers are part of the bird family Picidae, which also includes the piculets, wrynecks, and sapsuckers. Members of this family are found worldwide, except for Australia, New Guinea, New Zealand, Madagascar, and the extreme polar regions. ...

. The 14 species are found across the Americas. ''Colaptes'' woodpeckers typically have a brown or green back and wings with black barring, and a beige to yellowish underside, with black spotting or barring. There are usually colorful markings on the head. Many of these birds – particularly the northerly

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...

– are more terrestrial than usual among woodpeckers. Historically, there has been considerable uncertainty in assigning woodpecker species to genera and it is only by comparing DNA sequences that it has become possible to confidently place many of the species.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Colaptes'' was introduced by the Irish zoologist

Nicholas Aylward Vigors Nicholas Aylward Vigors (1785 – 26 October 1840) was an Irish zoologist and politician. He popularized the classification of birds on the basis of the quinarian system. Early life Vigors was born at Old Leighlin, County Carlow on 1785 a ...

in 1825 with the

northern flicker The northern flicker or common flicker (''Colaptes auratus'') is a medium-sized bird of the woodpecker family. It is native to most of North America, parts of Central America, Cuba, and the Cayman Islands, and is one of the few woodpecker spec ...

(''Colaptes auratus'') as 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 ...

. The name 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 ...

κολάπτης (''kolaptēs'') meaning "chiseller". The genus forms part of the woodpecker

subfamily In biological classification, a subfamily (Latin: ', plural ') is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classifica ...

Picinae Picinae containing the true woodpeckers is one of three subfamilies that make up the woodpecker family Picidae. True woodpeckers are found over much of the world, but do not occur in Madagascar or Australasia. Woodpeckers gained their English n ...

and has a sister relationship to the genus ''

Piculus ''Piculus'' is a genus of birds in the woodpecker family Picidae that are found in Central and South America. Taxonomy The genus was introduced by the German naturalist Johann Baptist von Spix in 1824. The type species was subsequently designate ...

''. The genus ''Colaptes'' is a member of the

tribe The term tribe is used in many different contexts to refer to a category of human social group. The predominant worldwide usage of the term in English is in the discipline of anthropology. This definition is contested, in part due to confl ...

Picini and belongs to a

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English ter ...

that contains five genera: ''Colaptes'', ''Piculus'', ''

Mulleripicus ''Mulleripicus'' is a genus of birds in the woodpecker family Picidae. They are found in South and Southeast Asia. The genus forms part of the woodpecker subfamily Picinae and has a sister relationship to the genus ''Dryocopus'' whose species are ...

'', ''

Dryocopus ''Dryocopus'' is a genus of large powerful woodpeckers, typically 35–45 cm in length. It has representatives in North and South America, Europe, and Asia; some South American species are endangered. It was believed to be closely related to ...

'' and '' Celeus''. Some of the relationships between the species within ''Colaptes'' are uncertain, with various genetic studies reporting slightly different

phylogenies A phylogenetic tree (also phylogeny or evolutionary tree Felsenstein J. (2004). ''Inferring Phylogenies'' Sinauer Associates: Sunderland, MA.) is a branching diagram or a tree showing the evolutionary relationships among various biological spec ...

, but it is evident that those species with "flicker" in their common name do not form a

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gr ...

group. The genus ''Colaptes'' contains 14 species. Of these, one species, the

Bermuda flicker The Bermuda flicker (''Colaptes oceanicus'') is an extinct woodpecker from the genus '' Colaptes''. It was confined to Bermuda and is known only by fossil remains dated to the Late Pleistocene and the Holocene. However, an old travel report by ex ...

, is now extinct: * †

(''Colaptes oceanicus'') – extinct, but may have survived into historical times - formerly Bermuda The online edition of the ''

Handbook of the Birds of the World The ''Handbook of the Birds of the World'' (HBW) is a multi-volume series produced by the Spanish publishing house Lynx Edicions in partnership with BirdLife International. It is the first handbook to cover every known living species of bird. ...

'' has split five of the species listed above to give a total of 20 species in the genus. None of the splits were based on results of molecular genetic studies. In addition, the common name of the northern flicker (''Colaptes auratus'') was changed to the "yellow-shafted flicker". These splits have not been adopted by the online edition of the '' Clements Checklist of Birds of the World'' maintained by ornithologists at

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

, nor by the

American Ornithological Society The American Ornithological Society (AOS) is an ornithological organization based in the United States. The society was formed in October 2016 by the merger of the American Ornithologists' Union (AOU) and the Cooper Ornithological Society. Its m ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q868238 Bird genera