Dacnis is a genus of Neotropical birds in the tanager family Thraupidae.
These are highly sexually dichromatic species with bright blue males and green females. They have various bill types and many of them feed on nectar.[1]
The genus Dacnis was introduced in 1816 by the French naturalist Georges Cuvier with the blue dacnis as the type species.[2] [3] The name is from the Ancient Greek daknis, an unidentified bird from Egypt listed by Hesychius of Alexandria and Sextus Pompeius Festus.[4] This genus is placed together with the genera Tesina and Cyanerpes in the subfamily Dacninae.[1]
The genus contains ten species:[5]
| Image | Scientific name | Common Name | Distribution |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dacnis berlepschi | Colombia and Ecuador | ||
| Dacnis venusta | Costa Rica, Colombia, Ecuador and Panama. | ||
| Dacnis cayana | Blue dacnis | Nicaragua to Panama, on Trinidad, and in South America south to Bolivia and northern Argentina | |
| Dacnis flaviventer | Amazonian regions of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Brazil; also the eastern Orinoco River region of Venezuela. | ||
| Dacnis hartlaubi | Colombia. | ||
| Dacnis lineata | Amazon and the Chocó-Magdalena. | ||
| Dacnis egregia | Colombia and Ecuador | ||
| Dacnis viguieri | Colombia and Panama. | ||
| Dacnis nigripes | Brazil. | ||
| Dacnis albiventris | Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela. | ||