meliphagid

plural meliphagids

1. biologyAny bird of the family Meliphagidae; a honeyeater.

   Flowers with long, tubular corollas are visited mainly by long-billed meliphagids; the latter, however, also visit flowers of other types.

   1985, Allen Keast, An introductory ecological biogeography of the Australo-Pacific Meliphagidae: New Zealand Journal of Zoology, volume 13, number 4, page 620

   2 more examples

   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.

   2002, Alan C. Ziegler, Hawaiian Natural History, Ecology, and Evolution, page 263

   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.

   2012, James R. Karr, “Chapter 22: Birds”, in H. Lieth, M.J.A. Werger, editors, Tropical Rain Forest Ecosystems: Biogeographical and Ecological Studies, page 408

   Synonyms: honeyeater