''Heleia'' is a

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

of birds in the white-eye family

Zosteropidae The white-eyes are a family, Zosteropidae, of small passerine birds native to tropical, subtropical and temperate Sub-Saharan Africa, southern and eastern Asia, and Australasia. White-eyes inhabit most tropical islands in the Indian Ocean, the ...

. One species, the Timor heleia is restricted to the island of

Timor Timor (, , ) is an island at the southern end of Maritime Southeast Asia, in the north of the Timor Sea. The island is Indonesia–Timor-Leste border, divided between the sovereign states of Timor-Leste in the eastern part and Indonesia in the ...

.van Balen, B. (2017). Spot-breasted White-eye (Heleia muelleri). In: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. (retrieved from http://www.hbw.com/node/60249 on 27 March 2017). The pygmy heleia is endemic to the island of

Borneo Borneo () is the List of islands by area, third-largest island in the world, with an area of , and population of 23,053,723 (2020 national censuses). Situated at the geographic centre of Maritime Southeast Asia, it is one of the Greater Sunda ...

. The thick-billed heleia, occurs on

Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Administratively, it forms the largest island in the East Nusa Tenggara Province. The area is 14,250 km2. Including Komodo and Rinca islands ...

and

Sumbawa Sumbawa, is an Indonesian island, located in the middle of the Lesser Sunda Islands chain, with Lombok to the west, Flores to the east, and Sumba further to the southeast. Along with Lombok, it forms the province of West Nusa Tenggara, but th ...

. van Balen, B. (2017). Thick-billed White-eye (Heleia crassirostris). In: del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona. (retrieved from http://www.hbw.com/node/60250 on 27 March 2017). The genus ''Heleia'' was introduced in 1865 by the German ornithologist

Gustav Hartlaub Karel Johan Gustav Hartlaub (8 November 1814 – 29 November 1900) was a German physician and ornithologist. Hartlaub was born in Bremen, and studied at Bonn and Berlin before graduating in medicine at Göttingen. In 1840, he began to study and ...

to accommodate the Timor heleia. The name is from

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 ...

''eleia'', an unidentified small bird mentioned by the Greek scholar

Callimachus Callimachus (; ; ) was an ancient Greek poet, scholar, and librarian who was active in Alexandria during the 3rd century BC. A representative of Ancient Greek literature of the Hellenistic period, he wrote over 800 literary works, most of which ...

. The genus contains ten species: * Javan heleia (''Heleia javanica'') * Grey-hooded heleia (''Heleia pinaiae'') * Pygmy heleia (''Heleia squamifrons'') * Mindanao heleia (''Heleia goodfellowi'') * Sulawesi heleia (''Heleia squamiceps'') * Eyebrowed heleia (''Heleia superciliaris'') * Crested heleia (''Heleia dohertyi'') * Timor heleia (''Heleia muelleri'') * Thick-billed heleia (''Heleia crassirostris'') * Yellow-spectacled heleia (''Heleia wallacei'')

References

Bird genera Birds of Malesia Taxonomy articles created by Polbot {{Zosteropidae-stub