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Wood hoopoe

Wood hoopoes
Green wood hoopoe (Phoeniculus purpureus) at Marakele National Park, South Africa
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Aves
Order: Bucerotiformes
Family: Phoeniculidae
Bonaparte, 1831
Genera

The wood hoopoes or scimitarbills are a small African family, Phoeniculidae, of near passerine birds. They live south of the Sahara Desert and are not migratory. While the family is now restricted to Sub-Saharan Africa, fossil evidence shows that it once had a larger distribution. Fossils attributed to this family have been found in Miocene rocks in Germany.[1]

The wood hoopoes are related to the kingfishers, the rollers, and the hoopoe, forming a clade with this last according to Hackett et al. (2008).[2] A close relationship between the hoopoe and the wood hoopoes is also supported by the shared and unique nature of their stapes.[3] The wood hoopoes most resemble the true hoopoes with their long down-curved bills and short rounded wings. According to genetic studies, the two genera, Phoeniculus and Rhinopomastus, appear to have diverged about ten million years ago, so some systematists treat them as separate subfamilies or even separate families.[4]

  1. ^ Mayr, Gerald (2000). "Tiny Hoopoe-Like Birds from the Middle Eocene of Messel (Germany)". Auk. 117 (4): 964–970. doi:10.1642/0004-8038(2000)117[0964:THLBFT]2.0.CO;2.
  2. ^ Hackett, Shannon J.; Kimball, RT; Reddy, S; et al. (2008). "A Phylogenomic Study of Birds Reveals Their Evolutionary History". Science. 320 (5884): 1763–8. Bibcode:2008Sci...320.1763H. doi:10.1126/science.1157704. PMID 18583609. S2CID 6472805.
  3. ^ Feduccia, Alan (1975). "The Bony Stapes in the Upupidae and Phoeniculidae: Evidence for Common Ancestry" (PDF). The Wilson Bulletin. 87 (3): 416–417.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference Fry was invoked but never defined (see the help page).

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