Dicaeum
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Dicaeum is a genus of birds in the flowerpecker family Dicaeidae, a group of passerines tropical southern Asia and Australasia from India east to the Philippines and south to Australia. Within the family Dicaeidae the genus Dicaeum is sister to a clade containing the genera Prionochilus and Pachyglossa.<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
Its members are very small, stout, often brightly coloured birds, 10 to 18 cm in length, with short tails, short thick curved bills and tubular tongues. The latter features reflect the importance of nectar in the diet of many species, although berries, spiders and insects are also taken.
2-4 eggs are laid, typically in a purse-like nest suspended from a tree.
TaxonomyEdit
The genus Dicaeum was introduced by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier in 1816.<ref>Template:Cite book The volume has the year 1817 printed on the title page but was published in 1816. See: Template:Cite book</ref> The name is from the Ancient Greek dikaion. Cuvier claimed that this was a word for a very small Indian bird mentioned by the Roman author Claudius Aelianus but the word probably referred instead to the scarab beetle Scarabaeus sacer.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> The type species was designated as the scarlet-backed flowerpecker by George Robert Gray in 1840.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>
The genus contains the following 44 species:<ref name=ioc>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
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