Not sure if this one has come up as I’ve been away in Uganda, PNG, New Caledonia and Fiji and have lost the thread of what’s been happening.
Anyway there’s a recent excellent and very thought provoking paper on the Phylogeny and evolution of the Meliphagoidea, the largest radiation of Australasian songbirds, by Janet L. Gardner, John Trueman, Daniel Ebert, Leo Joseph and Robery Magrath in Molecular Physics and Evolution 55 (2010) It has a few fascinating insights from their analysis of DNA material, which I’ll summarize as follows:
Scrubtit is sister to the whitefaces, a very unexpected finding. Bristlebirds do not include the Pilotbird as has sometimes been suggested, the latter being placed in the Acanthizidae. The family Dasyornithidae (Bristlebirds) comes next to Maluridae (Fairywrens) within the Meliphagoidea. Fernwren (Oreoscopus) is sister to all other Acanthizids, but it has been suggested that the Goldenface (Dwarf Whistler) of New Guinea is itself sister to Fernwren, a very unexpected finding, though that species has long been anomalous and clearly out of place in whistlers. Retaining Hylacola as separate from Calamanthus appears to be a matter of choice, and Redthroat and Speckled Warbler are each other’s closest relatives, so the genus Pyrrholaemus (Redthroat) could include Chthonicola (Speckled Warbler)
Rock Warbler (Origma) is sister to the New Guinea Mouse Warblers (Crateroscelis), which are sister to Sericornis.
One surprise is that Tasmanian Scrubwren is sister to Atherton Scrubwren (S. keri), and not the morphologically similar and geographically much closer White-browed Scrubwren, so they find no support for lumping Tasmanian and White-browed Scrubwrens.
Phil Gregory Sicklebill Safaris / Cassowary House
Website 2: Http://www.cassowary-house.com.au
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) to: birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
I don;t think anyone ever answered Syd’s question, I’m far from an expert but here is my explanation.
Basically if Goldenfaces and Fernwrens are sister taxa, the most recent common ancestor to Goldenfaces and Fernwrens should have no other descendants but Goldenfaces and Fernwrens.
In other words the Goldenfaces and Fernwrens can draw up their family tree back to a single root and in this family tree will only be Goldenfaces and Fernwrens
Andrew ===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) href=”mailto:birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au”>birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================
Please excuse my old-age ignorance of modern taxonomy. What exactly does “sister to” imply?
Syd
href=”mailto:birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au”>birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
===============================
To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send the message: unsubscribe (in the body of the message, with no Subject line) href=”mailto:birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au”>birding-aus-request@vicnet.net.au
http://birding-aus.org ===============================