[gwatola]

Another interesting set of papers in the latest Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, October 2008 issue. Anyone out there who can enlighten me on the findings on the southern skuas and on the Zoothera thrushes? Have the southern skuas all been lumped again?

cheers

George

[mb1848]

There is a web article in Swedish which cites the Zoothera article by Voelker & Klicka:
http://www.club300.se/News/Default.aspx?nID=776 .
A related article abstract here:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/j...TRY=1&SRETRY=0 .

[Xenospiza]

The skuas are a horrible mess if you look at their mtDNA — it's worse than the large gulls!
South Polar and “Brown” Skua are usually separated into different clades though.

The situation with thrushes is as follows:
Sialia, Myadestes and Neocossyphus are the sister group of the "true thrushes".
The brown/scaly Zoothera thrushes are the sister group of all other thrushes, and contain mollissima, dixoni, marginata, monticola, everetti, andromedae, dauma, margaritae, lunulata, talaseae & heinei.
Zoothera spiloptera has not been evaluated: this could be an interesting case; some other non-evaluated taxa are obviously part of this group.

The remaining thrushes are split into an American group, containing Ixoreus, Cichlopsis, Entomodestes, Catharus, Ridgwayia and Hylocichla (this is now saved from being subsumed into Catharus) and and an “Old World” group, containing Chlamydochaera, Cochoa, the pied/bright African/Asian ‘Zoothera’ thrushes (to be placed in Geokichla now), Psophocichla and (cosmopolitan) Turdus (including the American/Caribbean/Tristan thrushes often treated as separate genera).

For Europe, this means Siberian Thrush will become Geokichla sibirica; White's Thrush remains Zoothera (dauma) aurea (shame they didn't check this one too!)

The mysterious Cataponera and Geomalia are still awaiting scrutiny – I guess we could be in for a surprise!