meliphagid
English
![](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/b3/Meliphaga_gracilis_-_Julatten.jpg/220px-Meliphaga_gracilis_-_Julatten.jpg)
Noun
meliphagid (plural meliphagids)
- (zoology, ornithology) Any bird of the family Meliphagidae; a honeyeater.
- 1985, Allen Keast, An introductory ecological biogeography of the Australo-Pacific Meliphagidae, New Zealand Journal of Zoology, Volume 13, Number 4, page 620,
- Flowers with long, tubular corollas are visited mainly by long-billed meliphagids; the latter, however, also visit flowers of other types.
- 2002, Alan C. Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution, page 263,
- The meliphagids, as their common name implies, are primarily nectar feeding or nectarivorous and were quite possibly prevented from any significant adaptive radiation on each main island by competition from the (presumably) earlier radiated Hawaiian honeycreepers.
- 2012, James R. Karr, Chapter 22: Birds, H. Lieth, M.J.A. Werger (editors), Tropical Rain Forest Ecosystems: Biogeographical and Ecological Studies, page 408,
- I am not familiar with any detailed studies of the ecology of nectarivores in the brushtongued parrots, meliphagids, and certain marsupial mammals in forests of Australia and New Guinea.
- 1985, Allen Keast, An introductory ecological biogeography of the Australo-Pacific Meliphagidae, New Zealand Journal of Zoology, Volume 13, Number 4, page 620,
Synonyms
- (any species of Meliphagidae): honeyeater