''Amblyornis'' is a genus of

passerine A passerine () is any bird of the order Passeriformes (; from Latin 'sparrow' and '-shaped') which includes more than half of all bird species. Sometimes known as perching birds, passerines generally have an anisodactyl arrangement of their ...

birds belonging to the bowerbird family

Ptilonorhynchidae Bowerbirds () make up the bird family (biology), family Ptilonorhynchidae. They are renowned for their unique courtship behaviour, where males build a structure and decorate it with sticks and brightly coloured objects in an attempt to attract a ...

. The species are endemic to the mountains of

New Guinea New Guinea (; Hiri Motu: ''Niu Gini''; , fossilized , also known as Papua or historically ) is the List of islands by area, world's second-largest island, with an area of . Located in Melanesia in the southwestern Pacific Ocean, the island is ...

. Birds in this genus build "maypole-type" bowers in which vegetation is arranged around a central vertical sapling or tree-fern.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Amblyornis'' was introduced in 1872 by the American zoologist

Daniel Giraud Elliot Daniel Giraud Elliot (March 7, 1835 – December 22, 1915) was an American zoologist and the founder of the American Ornithologist Union. Life He was born in New York City on March 7, 1835, to George and Rebecca Elliot. In 1858, he married Ann ...

to accommodate a single species, ''Ptilorhynchus inornatus'' Schlegel, 1871, the Vogelkop bowerbird, which is the

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, 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 spe ...

monotypy In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispe ...

. The genus name combines the

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...

αμβλυοεις/''ambluoeis'' meaning "dull" with ορνις/''ornis'' meaning "bird".

Species

The genus contains five species:

References

Bird genera {{passeri-stub