Hi friends,
While working through the Cuckoos on my website (http://worldbirdinfo.net http://worldbirdinfo.net/ ), I came to the Bronze-Cuckoos, and realized that there was massive contradictions in recent authorities on how to treat this group.
First, as regards the genera involved, I found that most recent authorities assigned the Bronze-Cuckoos all to Chrysococcyx. This includes Payne,2005,The Cuckoos, and Dickinson,2003,The Howard & Moore Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World,3rd edn..p.210.
But Australian authorities, including Christidis and Boles, 2008, Systematics and Taxonomy of Australian Birds place the Australasian and Southeast Asian taxa in Chalcites. There is a bad misunderstanding of the Code in relation to this.
Payne accepted the interpretation of Chalcites Lesson,1831 that its type was determined by subsequent determination (Swain,1837,The natural history of the birds of Western Africa), as Cuculus klaas an African species. But in the ICZN Code Art.68 Type species fixed in the original publication, includes 68.1 which established order of precedence in ways of fixation. Firstly original designation; then monotypy; then absolute tautonymy; and lastly Linnaean tautonymy. Designaton of any type by the original author has priority over any subsequent designation.
Based on this; I think that absolute tautonymy established chalcites Ill. As the type. So Peters was right to conclude that the type was Cuculus chalcites Illiger = Cuculus plagosus Latham 1802, which is a race of Cuculus lucidus J.F.Gmelin,1788, as Australasian species.
Secondly, the tree in the chapter by Sorenson & Payne, A Molecular genetic Analysis, fig. 5.6,p.90 shows the two clades to share a common ancestor but that the two clades separated millions of years ago. And Joseph,Wilke Z& Alpers, Molecular Ecology (2002) 11, 829-837 and Christidis and Boles (2008) recognised Chalcites as distinct from Chrysococcyx. As was done by Howard & Moore,1994,A Complete Checklist of the Birds of the World,2nd ed.,p.116.
Beyond that, there is widespread disagreement as to what species to recognise in Chalcites group, and indeed what subspecies to allocate to such subspecies.
Payne,2005,The Cuckoos,pp.415 – 418 includes in Chrysococcyx [=Chalcites] minutillus C.m.aheneus (Junge 1935); C.m.jungei (Stresemann, 1938); C.m.rufomerus Hartert 1900; C.m.crassirotris Salvadori,1878, C.m.salvadorii Hartert & Stresemann,1925. C.russatus Gould,1868, was included in C.m.poecilurus (G.R.Gray, 1862).
Yet Parker,1981,Prolegomenon to further studies in the “Chrysococcyx malayanus” group, Zoologische Mededeelingen Rijks Museum van Natuurlijke historie,Leiden,187,3-54, recognised as subspecies of C.minutillus: C.m.peninsularis (S.Parker,1981); C.m.albifrons (Junge 1938);C.m.cleis (Parker 1981); C.m.minutillus, C.m.barnardi Mathews 1912. He recognised C.poecilurus as a distinct species. He reocgnised C.russatus aheneus, C.r.jungei, C.r. misoriensis, and C.r.russatus. He also recognised as distinct species, C.rufomerus, “C.salvadorii” and C.crassirostris.
Howard & Moore,1994,2nd edition, largely followed Parker 1981, placing aheneus,misoriensis,jungei with nominate russatus in russatus. Poecilurus was still recognised as a distinct species. And C.crassirostris was regarded as a distinct species. Note that Howard & Moore included nieuwenhuysi in minutillus, although this has generally been lumped with nominate minutillus.
Handbook of Australian,New Zealand and Antarctic Birds, Vol.4,p. 745 assigned barnardi, albifrons, and peninsularis to minutillus; to russatus he assigned aheneus, jungei, and misoriensis beside nominate russatus. It is also plain that HANZAB recognises C.rufomerus, C.crassirostris and C.ruficollis as extralimital good species.
Dickinson,2003,p.210 recognises C.crassirostis, with subspecies C.c.salvadorii beside the nominate.
What are we to make of this confused mess? It is a pity that Sorenson & Payne (2005) did not include any of the problematic taxa in their genetic analysis. I have requested Prof.Sorenson to send me his sequences for his Chrysococcyx, so that I can reanalyse the data, but have had no reply from him.
I have to make some decision for at least the time being. Maybe somewhill do a genetic analysis of all the problematic taxa.
What I have decided to do for the time being is to generally follow the accounts in Parker (1981) and HANZAB plus Christidis and Boles 2008 to the extent that they are relevant. I know that all of these accounts have studied extensive collections of specimens in reaching their conclusions. Whereas the same cannot be said for Payne, Dickinson and several other authors.
Please let me know what you think.
Thanks,
Dr John Penhallurick
86 Bingley Cres
Fraser A.C.T. 2615
Australia
email:jpenhall@bigpond.net.au
Phone: Home (612) 62585428
Mobile:0408585426
Please visit my website: http://www.worldbirdinfo.net http://www.worldbirdinfo.net/
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Dear all,
In reply to Dr. Penhallurick’s request on bronze-cuckoo taxonomy:
Sorenson & Payne’s tree chapter (in Payne 2005) depicts Chalcites and Chrysococcyx as one monophyletic group, which renders any decision as to generic boundaries subjective. With all probability, both treatments (a large Chrysococcyx or a division into two) are correct and merely depend on one’s preference for genus size.
However, even though the branch lengths for both groups are pretty deep in that tree, the branch support values are quite low, and the assumption of monophyly of each group is thus not strong. In our deliberations about how to treat these taxa for an upcoming book project, we therefore decided to play it safe and go with an expanded Chrysococcyx. I believe the IOC Checklist leadership decided to follow our judgment when this issue was last discussed (although I can’t be sure if they have meanwhile changed their treatment).
As for the minutillus complex, the amount of specimens of intermediate plumage coloration is absolutely staggering if one goes by Payne’s (2005) detailed inspection of museum material, even in such well-defined taxa as crassirostris that are usually afforded species rank. Surely the situation must be more complex than hitherto assumed and has the potential of involving complicated introgression patterns, as attested to by Leo Joseph’s paper on the three AUS taxa (Emu, in press). A study based solely on mtDNA (as in Sorenson & Payne) would probably tell us a limited part of the story. For this reason, we have decided in favor of a merger of all taxa into one polytpic species until more detailed molecular results are available.
Best wishes, Frank Rheindt