''Alcedo'' 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 n ...

of birds in the

kingfisher Kingfishers are a family, the Alcedinidae, of small to medium-sized, brightly colored birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species found in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania ...

subfamily Alcedininae. The genus was introduced by

Carl Linnaeus Carl Linnaeus (; 23 May 1707 – 10 January 1778), also known after his ennoblement in 1761 as Carl von Linné Blunt (2004), p. 171. (), was a Swedish botanist, zoologist, taxonomist, and physician who formalised binomial nomenclature, ...

in 1758 in the 10th 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

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( ...

is the common kingfisher (''Alcedo ispida'', now ''Alcedo atthis ispida''). ''Alcedo'' is the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

for "kingfisher".

Species

The genus contains the following seven species: Unlike many kingfishers, all members of ''Alcedo'' are specialist fish-eaters. They all have some blue feathers on their upper-parts and most species have a black bill. Except for the cerulean kingfisher they all have some rufous in their plumage. The female generally has more red on the lower mandible than the male. The smallest species is the cerulean kingfisher which is around in length; much the largest is Blyth's kingfisher with a length of .

References

Sources

External links

* * Bird genera Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Coraciiformes-stub