''Megaceryle'' is a genus of very large

kingfisher Kingfishers are a family, the Alcedinidae, of small to medium-sized, brightly coloured birds in the order Coraciiformes. They have a cosmopolitan distribution, with most species living in the tropical regions of Africa, Asia, and Oceania, ...

s. They have a wide distribution in the Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia. The genus was erected by German naturalist

Johann Jakob Kaup Johann Jakob von Kaup (10 April 1803 – 4 July 1873) was a German naturalist. A proponent of natural philosophy, he believed in an innate mathematical order in nature and he attempted biological classifications based on the Quinarian system. Kaup ...

in 1848. 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 ...

is a subspecies of the crested kingfisher, ''Megaceryle lugubris guttulata''. ''Megaceryle'' is from 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 ...

''megas'', "great", and the existing genus '' Ceryle''.

Species

The genus comprises four species: All are specialist fish-eaters with prominent stiff crests on their heads. They have dark grey or bluish-grey upperparts, largely unmarked in the two American species, but heavily spotted with white in the Asian crested kingfisher and the African giant kingfisher. The underparts may be white or rufous, and all forms have a contrasting breast band except male ringed kingfisher. The underpart pattern is always different for the two sexes of each species. These birds nest in horizontal tunnels made in a river bank or sand bank. Both parents excavate the tunnel, incubate the eggs, and feed the young. ''Megaceryle'' kingfishers are often seen perched prominently on trees, posts, or other suitable watch-points close to water before plunging in headfirst after their prey, usually

fish A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic animal, aquatic, Anamniotes, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fish fin, fins and craniate, a hard skull, but lacking limb (anatomy), limbs with digit (anatomy), digits. Fish can ...

crustacean Crustaceans (from Latin meaning: "those with shells" or "crusted ones") are invertebrate animals that constitute one group of arthropods that are traditionally a part of the subphylum Crustacea (), a large, diverse group of mainly aquatic arthrop ...

s, or

frog A frog is any member of a diverse and largely semiaquatic group of short-bodied, tailless amphibian vertebrates composing the order (biology), order Anura (coming from the Ancient Greek , literally 'without tail'). Frog species with rough ski ...

s, but sometimes aquatic

insect Insects (from Latin ') are Hexapoda, hexapod invertebrates of the class (biology), class Insecta. They are the largest group within the arthropod phylum. Insects have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body (Insect morphology#Head, head, ...

s and other suitably sized animals.

Origins and taxonomy

The previous view that the ''Megaceryle'' kingfishers arose in the

New World The term "New World" is used to describe the majority of lands of Earth's Western Hemisphere, particularly the Americas, and sometimes Oceania."America." ''The Oxford Companion to the English Language'' (). McArthur, Tom, ed., 1992. New York: ...

from a specialist fish-eating alcedinid ancestor that crossed the

Bering Strait The Bering Strait ( , ; ) is a strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, separating the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. The present Russia–United States maritime boundary is at 168° 58' ...

and gave rise to this genus and the American green kingfishers ''Chloroceryle'', with a large crested species later, in the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch (geology), epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.33 to 2.58Atlantic Ocean The Atlantic Ocean is the second largest of the world's five borders of the oceans, oceanic divisions, with an area of about . It covers approximately 17% of Earth#Surface, Earth's surface and about 24% of its water surface area. During the ...

to give rise to the giant and crested kingfishers is probably wrong. Rather, it now seems that the genus probably originates in the Old World, possibly Africa, and the ancestor of the belted and ringed kingfishers made the ocean crossing The ''Megaceryle'' kingfishers were formerly placed in ''Ceryle'' with the pied kingfisher, but the latter is genetically closer to the American green kingfishers.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1089134 Bird genera Taxa named by Johann Jakob Kaup