''Euodice'' is a genus of small seed-eating birds in the family

Estrildidae Estrildidae, or estrildid finches, is a family of small seed-eating passerine birds of the Old World tropics and Australasia. They comprise species commonly known as munias, mannikins, firefinches, parrotfinches and waxbills. They are gregarious ...

. These species are from the dry zones of Africa and India and are commonly referred to as silverbills. They were formerly included in the genus ''

Lonchura ''Lonchura'' is a genus of the estrildid finch family, and includes munias (or minias) and mannikins. They are seed-eating birds that are found in South Asia from India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka east to Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, and the Philippi ...

''. The grey-headed silverbill, which shares the name "silverbill", is a member of the same family but is placed in the genus ''

Spermestes ''Spermestes'' is a genus of small seed-eating birds in the family Estrildidae. They are distributed across Sub-Saharan Africa. Taxonomy The genus ''Spermestes'' was introduced in 1837 by the English naturalist William Swainson to accommodate ...

''.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Euodice'' was introduced in 1862 by the German naturalist

Ludwig Reichenbach Heinrich Gottlieb Ludwig Reichenbach (8 January 1793 – 17 March 1879) was a German botanist, ornithologist and illustrator. It was he who first requested Leopold and Rudolf Blaschka, Leopold Blaschka to make a set of glass marine invertebrate m ...

. The 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 ...

''eu'' meaning "good" with ''ōdikos'' meaning "musical" or "singing". 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 ...

was designated as the African silverbill in 1890 by

Richard Bowdler Sharpe Richard Bowdler Sharpe (22 November 1847 – 25 December 1909) was an English people, English zoologist and ornithology, ornithologist who worked as curator of the bird collection at the British Museum of natural history. In the course of his car ...

. The Indian and Africa silverbills were formerly placed in the genus ''

''. A

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study published in 2020 found that these species formed a

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

that was basal to the members of ''Lonchura''.

Species

The genus contains two species:

References

Bird genera Estrildidae Taxa named by Ludwig Reichenbach {{Estrildidae-stub