''Penelopides'' is the

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 relatively small, primarily

frugivorous A frugivore ( ) is an animal that thrives mostly on raw fruits or succulent fruit-like produce of plants such as roots, shoots, nuts and seeds. Approximately 20% of mammalian herbivores eat fruit. Frugivores are highly dependent on the abundance ...

hornbill Hornbills are birds found in tropical and subtropical Africa, Asia and Melanesia of the family Bucerotidae. They are characterized by a long, down-curved bill which is frequently brightly coloured and sometimes has a horny casque on the upper ...

s restricted to forested areas of the

Philippines The Philippines, officially the Republic of the Philippines, is an Archipelagic state, archipelagic country in Southeast Asia. Located in the western Pacific Ocean, it consists of List of islands of the Philippines, 7,641 islands, with a tot ...

. Their

common name In biology, a common name of a taxon or organism (also known as a vernacular name, English name, colloquial name, country name, popular name, or farmer's name) is a name that is based on the normal language of everyday life; and is often con ...

, tarictic hornbills, is an

onomatopoetic Onomatopoeia (or rarely echoism) is a type of word, or the process of creating a word, that phonetically imitates, resembles, or suggests the sound that it describes. Common onomatopoeias in English include animal noises such as ''oink'', '' ...

reference to the main call of several of them. They have a ridged plate-like structure on the base of their mandible. All are

sexually dimorphic Sexual dimorphism is the condition where sexes of the same species exhibit different Morphology (biology), morphological characteristics, including characteristics not directly involved in reproduction. The condition occurs in most dioecy, di ...

: males of all species are whitish-buff and black, while females of all except the Mindoro hornbill are primarily black.

Taxonomy

The genus ''Penelopides'' was introduced in 1849 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 ...

in a plate of the hornbills. 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 subsequently designated as the

Visayan hornbill The Visayan hornbill (''Penelopides panini'') is a hornbill found in tropical moist lowland forests of the Philippines in the Western Visayas region which includes the islands of Panay, Negros and formerly as well as the island of Masbate, and f ...

(''Penelopides panini'') by the English zoologist George Gray. The origin of Reichenbach's generic name is uncertain. It may be a combination of the Latin ''pene'' meaning "almost" or "nearly", 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 ...

''lophos'' meaning "crest" and ''-oidēs'' "resembling". While the

taxonomic 280px, Generalized scheme of taxonomy Taxonomy is a practice and science concerned with classification or categorization. Typically, there are two parts to it: the development of an underlying scheme of classes (a taxonomy) and the allocation ...

history of the Sulawesi hornbill has been uneventful, the number of species in the

Philippine Archipelago As an archipelago, the Philippines comprises about 7,641 islands clustered into three major island groups: Luzon, the Visayas, and Mindanao. Only about 2,000 islands are inhabited,

has been greatly debated. Traditionally, only a single Philippine species was recognized, the tarictic hornbill (''P. panini''). Following a review, it was recommended that it should be split into four

allopatric Allopatric speciation () – also referred to as geographic speciation, vicariant speciation, or its earlier name the dumbbell model – is a mode of speciation that occurs when biological populations become geographically isolated from ...

species, the Visayan (''P. panini''), Luzon (''P. manillae''), Mindanao (''P. affinis''), and Mindoro (''P. mindorensis''). Today most authorities accept this split, although some have recommended splitting the Samar (''P. samarensis'') from the Mindanao. The genus contains five species:

Taxonomy

References

Further reading