Todus

Todus is a genus of birds found in the Caribbean. It is the only genus within the todies family Todidae. The five species are small birds of the forests of the Greater Antilles: Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba, with adjacent islands, have one species each, and Hispaniola has two, the broad-billed tody in the lowlands (including Gonâve Island) and the narrow-billed tody in the highlands.

==Taxonomy and systematics == The genus Todus was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760 with the Jamaican tody (Todus todus) as the type species. Todus is a Latin word for a small bird mentioned by the Roman playwright Plautus and the grammarian Sextus Pompeius Festus. This name had earlier been used for the Jamaican tody by the Irish physician Patrick Browne in his book The Civil and Natural History of Jamaica that was published in 1756.