''Dumetia'' 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 in the Old World babbler family Timaliidae that are found in India and Sri Lanka.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Dumetia'' was introduced in 1852 by the English zoologist

Edward Blyth Edward Blyth (23 December 1810 – 27 December 1873) was an English zoologist who worked for most of his life in India as a curator of zoology at the Asiatic Society, Royal Asiatic Society of Bengal in Calcutta. He set about updating the museum ...

. The genus name is from

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

''dumetum'', ''dumeti,'' meaning "thicket." Blyth listed two species in the genus, and of these,

George Robert Gray George Robert Gray (8 July 1808 – 6 May 1872) was an English zoology, zoologist and author, and head of the Ornithology, ornithological section of the British Museum, now the Natural History Museum, London, Natural History Museum, London f ...

in 1855 selected the

tawny-bellied babbler The tawny-bellied babbler (''Dumetia hyperythra'') also known in older Indian works as the rufous-bellied babbler is a small babbler that forages in small groups in low scrub forests. Like other members of the large Old World babbler family they ...

as 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 ...

Species

The genus contains the following species:

References

Birds of South Asia Taxa named by Edward Blyth Bird genera {{Timaliidae-stub