''Penelopides'' is the

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 relatively small, primarily

frugivorous A frugivore is an animal that thrives mostly on raw fruits or succulent fruit-like produce of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds. Approximately 20% of mammalian herbivores eat fruit. Frugivores are highly dependent on the abundance an ...

hornbill Hornbills (Bucerotidae) are a family of bird found in tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia and Melanesia. They are characterized by a long, down-curved bill which is frequently brightly coloured and sometimes has a casque on the upper mandibl ...

s restricted to forested areas of the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

. Their

common name In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of everyday life; and is often contrast ...

, tarictic hornbills, is an

onomatopoetic Onomatopoeia is the process of creating a word that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Such a word itself is also called an onomatopoeia. Common onomatopoeias include animal noises such as ''oink'', ''m ...

reference to the main call of several of them. They have a ridged plate-like structure on the base of their mandible. All are

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 ani ...

: males of all species are whitish-buff and black, while females of all except the Mindoro hornbill are primarily black.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Penelopides'' was introduced in 1849 by the German naturalist

Ludwig Reichenbach Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach (8 January 1793 – 17 March 1879) was a German botanist and ornithologist. It was he who first requested Leopold Blaschka to make a set of glass marine invertebrate models for scientific education and museum ...

in a plate of the hornbills. 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

Visayan hornbill The Visayan hornbill (''Penelopides panini'') is a hornbill found in rainforests on the islands of Panay, Negros, Masbate, and Guimaras, and formerly Ticao, in the Philippines. It formerly included all other Philippine tarictic hornbills as s ...

(''Penelopides panini'') by the English zoologist George Gray. The origin of Reichenbach's generic name is uncertain. It may be a combination of the Latin ''pene'' meaning "almost" or "nearly", 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 ...

''lophos'' meaning "crest" and ''-oidēs'' "resembling". While the taxonomic history of the Sulawesi hornbill has been uneventful, the number of species in the

Philippine Archipelago The islands of the Philippines, also known as the Philippine Archipelago, comprises about 7,641 islands, of which only about 2,000 are inhabited.allopatric Allopatric speciation () – also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name the dumbbell model – is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations become geographically isolated from ...

species, the Visayan (''P. panini''), Luzon (''P. manillae''), Mindanao (''P. affinis''), and Mindoro (''P. mindorensis''). Today most authorities accept this split, although some have recommended splitting the Samar (''P. samarensis'') from the Mindanao. The genus contains five species:

References

* Kemp, A. C. (2001). Family Bucerotidae (Hornbills). pp. 436–523 in: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., & Sargatal, J. eds. (2001). ''Handbook of the Birds of the World.'' Vol. 6. Mousebirds to Hornbills. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. Bird genera * Taxa named by Ludwig Reichenbach {{Coraciiformes-stub