Chloropicus
Genus of birds
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Chloropicus is a genus of birds in the woodpecker family Picidae that are native to Sub-Saharan Africa.
| Chloropicus | |
|---|---|
| |
| Bearded woodpecker Chloropicus namaquus | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Piciformes |
| Family: | Picidae |
| Tribe: | Melanerpini |
| Genus: | Chloropicus Malherbe, 1845 |
| Type species | |
| Picus (Chloropicus) pyrrhogaster[1] Malherbe, 1845 | |
| Species | |
|
3, see text | |
Taxonomy
The genus was introduced by the French ornithologist Alfred Malherbe in 1845 with the fire-bellied woodpecker (Chloropicus pyrrhogaster) as the type species.[2] The word Chloropicus is from the Greek khlōros meaning green and pikos meaning woodpecker.[3] Molecular genetic studies have shown that the genus Chloropicus is sister to the genus Dendropicos.[4][5] Species in this genus were previously sometimes assigned to Dendropicos.[6][7]
The genus contains the three species:[7]
| Image | Scientific name | Common name | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|
 | Chloropicus namaquus | Bearded woodpecker | Angola, Botswana, Central African Republic, Chad, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Rwanda, Somalia, South Africa, Sudan, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia, and Zimbabwe |
.jpg) | Chloropicus xantholophus | Yellow-crested woodpecker | Angola, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Republic of the Congo, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Gabon, Kenya, Nigeria, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda. |
_(cropped).jpg) | Chloropicus pyrrhogaster | Fire-bellied woodpecker | Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo and western Cameroon |
