Dendrocoptes
Genus of birds
Dendrocoptes is a genus of woodpeckers in the family Picidae native to Eurasia.
01Taxonomy
The genus Dendrocoptes was erected by the German ornithologists Jean Cabanis and Ferdinand Heine in 1863 with the middle spotted woodpecker (Dendrocoptes medius ) as the type species. The name combines the Ancient Greek dendron meaning "tree" and koptō meaning "to strike". A 2015 molecular phylogenetic analysis of the nuclear and mitochondrial DNA sequences from pied woodpeckers found that the genus Dendrocopos was polyphyletic. As part of the reorganisation to create monophyletic genera, three species from Dendrocopos were moved to the resurrected genus Dendrocoptes. The taxonomic committee of the British Ornithologists' Union recommended an alternative arrangement in which the genera Dendrocoptes and Leiopicus were combined into a larger Dendropicos. The yellow-crowned woodpecker (Leiopicus mahrattensis) is closely related to the species in this genus.
The genus contains three species:
| Image | Scientific name | Common Name | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dendrocoptes dorae | Arabian woodpecker | southwestern Saudi Arabia and Yemen | |
| Dendrocoptes auriceps | Brown-fronted woodpecker | Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Pakistan and Bhutan. | |
| Dendrocoptes medius | Middle spotted woodpecker | northern Spain and France east to Poland and Ukraine, and south to central Italy (where local), the Balkan Peninsula, Lithuania, Latvia, Turkey, the Caucasus, and Iran |
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Dendrocoptes”, 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.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Dendrocopos medius (Marek Szczepanek).jpg by Marek Szczepanek, CC BY-SA 3.0
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