The

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweig ...

genus ''Apus'' comprise some of the

Old World The "Old World" is a term for Afro-Eurasia that originated in Europe , after Europeans became aware of the existence of the Americas. It is used to contrast the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia, which were previously thought of by th ...

members of the family

Apodidae The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are not closely related to any passerine species. Swifts are placed in the order Apodiformes with hummingbirds. The treeswifts are closely ...

, commonly known as

swift Swift or SWIFT most commonly refers to: * SWIFT, an international organization facilitating transactions between banks ** SWIFT code * Swift (programming language) * Swift (bird), a family of birds It may also refer to: Organizations * SWIFT ...

s. They are among the fastest birds in the world. They resemble swallows, to which they are not related, but have shorter tails and sickle-shaped wings. Swifts spend most of their life aloft, have very short legs and use them mostly to cling to surfaces.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Apus'' was erected by the Italian naturalist

Giovanni Antonio Scopoli Giovanni Antonio Scopoli (sometimes Latinized as Johannes Antonius Scopolius) (3 June 1723 – 8 May 1788) was an Italian physician and naturalist. His biographer Otto Guglia named him the "first anational European" and the "Linnaeus of the Au ...

in 1777 based on

tautonymy A tautonym is a scientific name of a species in which both parts of the name have the same spelling, such as ''Rattus rattus''. The first part of the name is the name of the genus and the second part is referred to as the ''specific epithet'' in ...

and the common swift which had been given the

binomial name In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

''Hirundo apus'' by the Swedish naturalist

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. The name ''Apus'' is

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 a swift, thought by the ancients to be a type of swallow with no feet (from

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 p ...

α, ''a'', "without", and πούς, ''pous'', "foot"). Before the 1950s, there was some controversy over which group of organism should have 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 n ...

name ''Apus''. In 1801,

Bosc Bosc may refer to: * Bosc pear, a cultivar of the European Pear * Bioinformatics Open Source Conference (BOSC), an academic conference * Gobiosoma bosc, a fish of family Gobiidae People * Louis Augustin Guillaume Bosc (1759–1828), French botan ...

gave the small

crustacean Crustaceans (Crustacea, ) form a large, diverse arthropod taxon which includes such animals as decapods, seed shrimp, branchiopods, fish lice, krill, remipedes, isopods, barnacles, copepods, amphipods and mantis shrimp. The crustacean gro ...

organisms, known today as ''

Triops ''Triops'' is a genus of small crustaceans in the order Notostraca (tadpole shrimp). The long-lasting resting eggs of several species of ''Triops'' are commonly sold in kits as a pet. The animals hatch upon contact with fresh water. Most adult-st ...

,'' the genus name ''Apus,'' and later authors continued to use this term. Keilhack suggested (in 1909) that this was incorrect since there was already an avian genus named ''Apus'' by Scopoli in 1777 . It was not until 1958 that the controversy finally ended when the

International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature The International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) is an organization dedicated to "achieving stability and sense in the scientific naming of animals". Founded in 1895, it currently comprises 26 commissioners from 20 countries. Orga ...

(ICZN) ruled against the use of the genus name ''Apus'' for the crustaceans and instead recognized the term ''Triops''.

Species

The genus contains 20 species: * Cape Verde swift, ''Apus alexandri'' * Common swift, ''Apus apus'' * Plain swift, ''Apus unicolor'' *

Nyanza swift The Nyanza swift (''Apus niansae'') is a species of swift in the family Apodidae. It is found in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Somalia, South Sudan, Tanzania, and Uganda. Identification The Nyanza swift, also known as the brown swift, is a ...

, ''Apus niansae'' * Pallid swift, ''Apus pallidus'' * African black swift, ''Apus barbatus'' *

Malagasy black swift The Malagasy black swift (''Apus balstoni'') or Madagascar swift, is a species of swift in the family Apodidae. It is endemic to Madagascar and the Comoro Islands. Habitat Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland fore ...

, ''Apus balstoni'' *

Fernando Po swift The Fernando Po swift (''Apus sladeniae'') is a species of swift in the family Apodidae. It is found in Angola, Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, and Nigeria. The specific epithet is for Constance Sladen Constance Sladen (11 August 184817 J ...

''Apus sladeniae'' *

Forbes-Watson's swift Forbes-Watson's swift (''Apus berliozi'') is a species of swift in the family Apodidae. It breeds in coastal areas of Somalia and the southern Arabian Peninsula The Arabian Peninsula, (; ar, شِبْهُ الْجَزِيرَةِ الْ ...

, ''Apus berliozi'' *

Bradfield's swift Bradfield's swift (''Apus bradfieldi'') is a species of swift in the family Apodidae. It is found in Angola, Botswana, Namibia, and South Africa. The common name and Latin binomial commemorate the South African naturalist R. D. Bradfield ...

, ''Apus bradfieldi'' *

Pacific swift The Pacific swift or fork-tailed swift (''Apus pacificus'') is a species of bird that is part of the Swift family. It breeds in eastern Asia. It is strongly migratory, spending the northern hemisphere's winter in Southeast Asia and Austra ...

, ''Apus pacificus'' *

Salim Ali's swift Salim Ali's swift (''Apus salimalii'') is a small bird, superficially similar to a house martin. It is, however, completely unrelated to those passerine species, since swifts are in the order Apodiformes. The resemblances between the groups ...

, ''Apus salimalii'' *

Blyth's swift Blyth's swift (''Apus leuconyx''), is a small bird, superficially similar to a house martin. It is, however, completely unrelated to those passerine species, since swifts are in the order Apodiformes. The resemblances between the groups are d ...

, ''Apus leuconyx'' * Cook's swift, ''Apus cooki'' *

Dark-rumped swift The dark-rumped swift (''Apus acuticauda'') is a species of swift in the family Apodidae. It is found in Bhutan and Northeast India and is a vagrant to Thailand. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical moist lowland forests. It is threaten ...

, ''Apus acuticauda'' * Little swift, ''Apus affinis'' * House swift, ''Apus nipalensis'' * Horus swift, ''Apus horus'' * White-rumped swift, ''Apus caffer'' *

Bates's swift Bates's swift (''Apus batesi'') is a species of small swift in the family Apodidae which is found in western Africa. Description Bates's swift is a small, slender swift with a deeply forked tail which is often held closed to form a point. It has ...

''Apus batesi'' Known fossil species are: *''Apus gaillardi'' (Middle/Late Miocene of La Grive-St.-Alban, France) *''Apus wetmorei'' (Early - Late Pliocene? of SC and SE Europe) *''Apus baranensis'' (Late Pliocene of SE Europe) *''Apus submelba'' (Middle Pleistocene of Slovakia) The Miocene ''"Apus" ignotus'' is now placed in '' Procypseloides''.

References

{{Authority control Bird genera Taxa named by Giovanni Antonio Scopoli