Selasphorus is a genus of hummingbirds from Middle and North America.
Taxonomy The genus Selasphorus was introduced in 1832 by the English naturalist William Swainson to accommodate the rufous hummingbird which is now the type species. The title page bears the year 1831 but the volume did not appear until 1832. The name combines the Ancient Greek selas meaning "light" or "flame" with -phoros meaning "-carrying".
The genus contains the following nine species:
The wine-throated hummingbird and the bumblebee hummingbird were formerly placed in the genus Atthis. Molecular phylogenetic studies published in 2014 and 2017 found that Atthis was embedded within Selasphorus. The genera were therefore merged and these hummingbirds were moved to Selasphorus.
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