Selenidera
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Guianan Toucanets (Selenidera culik), from Monograph of the Ramphastidae by John Gould.
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Selenidera is a bird genus containing five to seven species of toucanet in the toucan family Ramphastidae. They are found in lowland rainforest (below 1500m) in tropical South America with one species reaching Central America.
All the species have green upperparts, red undertail-coverts and a patch of bare blue or blue-green skin around the eye. Unlike most other toucans, the sexes are different in colour. The males all have a black crown, throat and breast and yellow cheeks; the females are more variable in appearance. The calls are low-pitched and croaking.
They tend to forage alone or in pairs, feeding mainly on fruit. They are fairly quiet and elusive birds which generally keep to dense cover. The nest is a cavity in a tree which the birds enlarge by excavating with their bills. The white eggs are incubated by both parents.
[edit] Species list
- Guianan Toucanet, Selenidera culik
- Tawny-tufted Toucanet, Selenidera nattereri
- Gold-collared Toucanet, Selenidera reinwardtii
- Langsdorff's Toucanet or Green-billed Toucanet, Selenidera reinwardtii langsdorffii, may be a separate species from S. reinwardtii.
- Gould's Toucanet, Selenidera gouldii, sometimes considered a subspecies of S. maculirostris.
- Spot-billed Toucanet, Selenidera maculirostris
- Yellow-eared Toucanet, Selenidera spectabilis
[edit] Speciation in Selenidera
The genus Selenidera was used by the German biologist Jürgen Haffer as an example of the "refugia" hypothesis of speciation. He suggested that the different species evolved from one common ancestor whose population was fragmented by the retreat of the rainforest into the wettest areas during periods of dry climate in the Pleistocene epoch. The single species developed into several species in these isolated refugia. When the forest expanded again during a wetter period, the ranges of the different species expanded until they came into contact with each other, forming a complementary pattern of distributions.
[edit] References
- Jürgen Haffer (1969) Speciation in Amazonian Forest Birds, Science, 165:131-137
- Jorge R. Rodriguez Mata, Francisco Erize & Maurice Rumboll (2006) A Field Guide to the Birds of South America, Collins, London
- Christopher Perrins, ed. (2004) The New Encyclopedia of Birds, Oxford University Press, Oxford