Tachymarptis is a genus

Genus

In biology, a genus is a low-level taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, which is an example of definition by genus and differentia...

 of bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 in the swift

Swift

The swifts are a family, Apodidae, of highly aerial birds. They are superficially similar to swallows, but are actually not closely related to passerine species at all; swifts are in the separate order Apodiformes, which they share with hummingbirds...

 family, Apodidae. It contains the Alpine Swift

Alpine Swift

The Alpine Swift syn. is a species of Swift. The bird is superficially similar to a large Barn Swallow or House Martin. It is, however, completely unrelated to those passerine species, since swifts are in the order Apodiformes...

 (Tachymarptis melba) of Eurasia and Africa and the Mottled Swift

Mottled Swift

The Mottled Swift is a species of bird in the swift family, Apodidae. It is one of two species in the genus Tachymarptis together with the Alpine Swift . It occurs widely in eastern Africa and locally in western Africa...

 (Tachymarptis aequatorialis) of Africa. They are large swifts with relatively broad wings, a large head, a medium-length forked tail and white in the underparts. They are often included in the genus Apus

Apus (genus)

The bird genus Apus comprise some of the Old World members of the family Apodidae, commonly known as swifts.They are among the fastest birds in the world. They resemble swallows, to which they are not related, but have shorter tails and sickle-shaped wings...

but they are larger than other members of that genus, their nestlings have a different foot structure and they host different species of feather lice. A recent study of mitochondrial

Mitochondrial DNA

Mitochondrial DNA is the DNA located in organelles called mitochondria, structures within eukaryotic cells that convert the chemical energy from food into a form that cells can use, adenosine triphosphate...

 and nuclear

Nuclear DNA

Nuclear DNA, nuclear deoxyribonucleic acid , is DNA contained within a nucleus of eukaryotic organisms. In mammals and vertebrates, nuclear DNA encodes more of the genome than the mitochondrial DNA and is composed of information inherited from two parents, one male, and one female, rather than...

 markers

Genetic marker

A genetic marker is a gene or DNA sequence with a known location on a chromosome that can be used to identify cells, individuals or species. It can be described as a variation that can be observed...

 supports the separation of Tachymarptis and Apus. The name Tachymarptis comes from Greek

Greek language

Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. Its writing system has been the Greek alphabet for the majority of its history;...

takhus ("fast") and marptis ("seizer").