Chloropicus
Genus of birds
Chloropicus is a genus of birds in the woodpecker family Picidae that are native to Sub-Saharan Africa.
01Taxonomy
The genus was introduced by the French ornithologist Alfred Malherbe in 1845 with the fire-bellied woodpecker (Chloropicus pyrrhogaster) as the type species. The word Chloropicus is from the Greek khlōros meaning green and pikos meaning woodpecker. Molecular genetic studies have shown that the genus Chloropicus is sister to the genus Dendropicos. Species in this genus were previously sometimes assigned to Dendropicos.
The genus contains the three species:
| 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 | |
| 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. | |
| Chloropicus pyrrhogaster | Fire-bellied woodpecker | Benin, Ivory Coast, Ghana, Guinea, Liberia, Mali, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Togo and western Cameroon |
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Chloropicus”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
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