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Ploceidae (1 Viewer)

Nutcracker said:
Probably very hard to access copies of Congolese journals in 1950s / 1960s UK / N America . . . no internet, not even photocopiers.
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It's Belgian, actually. The former Musée du Congo Belge, now Musée Royal d'Afrique Centrale / Koninklijk Museum voor Midden-Afrika, is located at Tervuren, Flemish-Brabant, Belgium -- http://www.africamuseum.be/

But anyway, the paper that was puzzlingly "largely ignored" was the later one: Wolters HE. 1970. On the generic classification of the weaver birds of the Malimbus-Ploceus group. Nat. Hist. Bull. (Siam Soc.) 23:369-391. (Pdf link in my earlier post above.)
I also still think this is most likely the paper that Craig 2010 (HBW15) meant to refer to. ("H.E. Wolters is the only recent author who has suggested a major subdivision into different genera." Wolters 1970 only referred to Wolters 1954 as having proposed a merging of Ploceus and Malimbus [something he had actually already suggested two years earlier]; the opposite, thus.)

Re. "Craig & Barker": the exact wording in HBW15 is : "A cladistic analysis of this genus and other members of the weaver family by A.J.F.K. Craig and N. Barker, using 60 morphological and behavioural characters, supports the view that the genus Ploceus as currently constituted is not monophyletic, but the provisional results of this analysis are not robust, and must await data before new generic divisions can be suggested with confidence."
Given that Adrian J.F.K. Craig is the author of this family account, that "supports" is a present rather than past tense, and that the results are said to be provisional, I suspect that this was merely a report about his own unpublished work-in-progress.
 
Richard Klim said:
John Boyd (TiF):
www.jboyd.net/Taxo/changes.html (1 May 2016)
www.jboyd.net/Taxo/List28.html#ploceidae
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Re. dating:

If Warren et al's tree is misrooted (which it clearly is IMO), and if they used this tree to date the divergence events, you can't expect their dates to be correct.

As can be seen, the "basal" branches in their tree (the ones leading to the outgroup taxa) become shorter and shorter as you go up -- this is not real, just a consequence of the internodal divergences in this part of the tree being counted in the wrong direction. A dating algorithm will of course force all of the terminals to end up synchronous (all the samples are present specimens). To make, i.a., Malimbus and Ploceus bicolor present taxa, the algorithm will have to stretch (= assume a rate of change lower than real) the branches that lead to them, and shrink (= assume a rate of change higher than real) the internodes that are between node [6] (date fixed by the authors as 0.5 MYA) and what is accepted as the root of the tree. As a result, the nodes that are between node [6] and the real root of the tree should be expected to have their age underestimated.
 
l_raty said:
But anyway, the paper that was puzzlingly "largely ignored" was the later one: Wolters HE. 1970. On the generic classification of the weaver birds of the Malimbus-Ploceus group. Nat. Hist. Bull. (Siam Soc.) 23:369-391.
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Correct. The "largely ignored" phrase was perhaps partially quoted from elsewhere I believe. I meant his work in general though not just this paper, something I've felt since discovering his work on Serinus some years ago.


l_raty said:
Re. "Craig & Barker": the exact wording in HBW15 is : "A cladistic analysis of this genus and other members of the weaver family by A.J.F.K. Craig and N. Barker, using 60 morphological and behavioural characters, supports the view that the genus Ploceus as currently constituted is not monophyletic, but the provisional results of this analysis are not robust, and must await data before new generic divisions can be suggested with confidence."
Given that Adrian J.F.K. Craig is the author of this family account, that "supports" is a present rather than past tense, and that the results are said to be provisional, I suspect that this was merely a report about his own unpublished work-in-progress.
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Nicely deduced. At least someone appears to be working on this group.
 
De Silva, T.N., Townsend Peterson, A., Fernando, S.W., Bates, J.M., Marks, B.D., Girard, M., Phylogenetic relationships of weaverbirds (Aves: Ploceidae): A first robust phylogeny based on mitochondrial and nuclear markers, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (2016), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev. 2016.12.013 In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 21 December 2016.

[abstract]
 
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Peter Kovalik said:
De Silva, T.N., Townsend Peterson, A., Fernando, S.W., Bates, J.M., Marks, B.D., Girard, M., Phylogenetic relationships of weaverbirds (Aves: Ploceidae): A first robust phylogeny based on mitochondrial and nuclear markers, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (2016), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev. 2016.12.013 In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 21 December 2016.
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(http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev.2016.12.013 it should be -- no space after 'ympev.')
[Fig. 1]
[Fig. 2]​
A long-awaited one :t:;).

This nicely confirms and expands what we suspected/knew already (cf. above, and also [here]) -- Ploceus must be restricted to the four Asian spp; the Madagascan Ploceus spp are sister to the African typical weaver/malimbe radiation; in this African radiation, the species usually placed in Ploceus (i.e., Textor sensu TiF) are paraphyletic wrt Malimbus.
The authors suggest lumping the entire African radiation (Malimbus, Anaplectes, Textor sensu TiF) into a quite (too?) broad Malimbus. (Which at least has the advantage that we don't need to worry too much about which subclade most unsampled species fall in.)

(Main remaining "mysteries", in my view: Brachycope anomala/Ploceus anomalus [looks like it might be a bishop, based on two very short (100bp) published cox1 sequences, but I wouldn't bet too much on this] and Pachyphantes/Ploceus superciliosus [seems pretty distinct, based on a single 297bp-long published cox1 sequence; can't really say more; and of course one single sequence can always 'be wrong' for one or another reason].)
 
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It's lacking some data to conclude to an enlarged Malimbus , the following species : ( flavipes, angolensis, sanctithomae... ) are not sampled and are sometimes placed in distinct genera (respectively Rhinoploceus, Notiospiza and Thomasophantes), it's too early for a complete review of these genera.
 
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I would definitely not base any taxonomic recommendation on this but, for the entertainment, I have attached an unbootstrapped tree including all available cox1 Ploceidae sequences. I used the same colour codes for the clades as in the [graphical abstract] of the recent paper.

Many of these sequences are from Sonet et al. 2011 [pdf here] (pp.117-131): these are short (~300bp) to very short (100bp) sequences obtained from old to very old museum specimens; some of them may have problems -- in fact for some of them I see a strong suggestion that they do have problems. Almost all the sequences in the data set include the region corresponding to the 100bp of the shortest ones (the two that do not only lack a couple of bases at the start of this region), hence artefacts associated to some sequences having no overlapping DNA at all should at least be absent. Due to the shortness of many of the sequences, bootstrapping this data set would largely destroy the structure that can be seen in the unbootstrapped tree; this structure is not to be regarded as having received statistical support; yet, it does reflect the divergence levels that are present between the sequences of the data set.

The length of each sequence is given in parentheses, in the tip label, before the GenBank/BOLD accession number.
 

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l_raty said:
I would definitely not base any taxonomic recommendation on this but, for the entertainment, I have attached an unbootstrapped tree including all available cox1 Ploceidae sequences. I used the same colour codes for the clades as in the [graphical abstract] of the recent paper.

Many of these sequences are from Sonet et al. 2011 [pdf here] (pp.117-131): these are short (~300bp) to very short (100bp) sequences obtained from old to very old museum specimens; some of them may have problems -- in fact for some of them I see a strong suggestion that they do have problems. Almost all the sequences in the data set include the region corresponding to the 100bp of the shortest ones (the two that do not only lack a couple of bases at the start of this region), hence artefacts associated to some sequences having no overlapping DNA at all should at least be absent. Due to the shortness of many of the sequences, bootstrapping this data set would largely destroy the structure that can be seen in the unbootstrapped tree; this structure is not to be regarded as having received statistical support; yet, it does reflect the divergence levels that are present between the sequences of the data set.

The length of each sequence is given in parentheses, in the tip label, before the GenBank/BOLD accession number.
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Laurent, I appreciate your input, as always. B :)
 
Peter Kovalik said:
De Silva, T.N., Townsend Peterson, A., Fernando, S.W., Bates, J.M., Marks, B.D., Girard, M., Phylogenetic relationships of weaverbirds (Aves: Ploceidae): A first robust phylogeny based on mitochondrial and nuclear markers, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution (2016), doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ympev. 2016.12.013 In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 21 December 2016.

[abstract]
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TiF Update January 4, 2017

Weavers: The weavers have been rearranged based mainly on De Silva et al. (2017), with some help from the barcoding results of Sonet et al. (2011), who did not provide a tree. Raty did, but cautions that the barcoding data is quite limited and that the result has has no real statistical support. Indeed, when compared to De Silva et al. (2017), there are some odd placements. Nonetheless, I have treated close relationships as having some meaning. When combined with traditional taxonomy, this has allowed me to regroup Textor (formerly the African Ploceus). Keep in mind that I previously restricted the name Ploceus to the Asian species. The two Madagascan weavers are separated as Nelicurvius, with some of the African Textor being moved to Malimbus. Although Sonet et al.'s data indicate that the Golden Palm Weaver is close to Nelicurvius, I have considerable doubts about this and have retained it in Textor.

I have merged Pseudonigrita into Philetairus as they are closely related. Note that the main time-calibration in De Silva et al. (2017) is way too old as the whole family is probably not more than 20 million years old. I have separated Pachyphantes from Textor and placed it near Quela based on the barcoding data. I have also merged Brachycope into Euplectes, again based on the barcoding data, and merged Anaplectes into Malimbus based on De Silva et al. (2017).

The tree in De Silva et al. (2017) encouraged me to acknowledge the split of Aldabra Fody, Foudia aldabrana, from Comoros Fody, Foudia eminentissima.

I have also removed the alternate English name African Golden-Weaver from Southern Masked Weaver, Textor velatus and removed the hyphens from Masked and Golden Weavers.
 
Hi guys,
The complete phylogeny is being worked on. I'm doing the lab work these days using ancient DNA. Pretty soon I'll be able to complete the weaver phylogeny hopefully.
 
LeNomenclatoriste said "I would prefer to separate the Sakalava Weaver in the genus Saka Roberts, 1947 , based only on appearance." Wolters in Die Vogelarten der Erde 4 lieferung page 290 puts N. sakalava in subgenus Saka Austin Roberts 1947 Ostrich. He puts N. nelicourvi in subgenus Nelicurvius Bonaparte 1850 the genus name also.
 
mb1848 said:
LeNomenclatoriste said "I would prefer to separate the Sakalava Weaver in the genus Saka Roberts, 1947 , based only on appearance." Wolters in Die Vogelarten der Erde 4 lieferung page 290 puts N. sakalava in subgenus Saka Austin Roberts 1947 Ostrich. He puts N. nelicourvi in subgenus Nelicurvius Bonaparte 1850 the genus name also.
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According to HBW , P. sakalava and nelicourvi were considered conspecifics in the past.
 
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IOC Updates

IOC Updates Diary June 30

Move sparrow-weavers (Plocepasser) from Passeridae to Ploceidae
Move Rufous-tailed Weaver (Histurgops) from Passeridae to Ploceidae
Move social-weavers (Pseudonigrita) from Passeridae to Ploceidae
Move Sociable Weaver (Philetairus) from Passeridae to Ploceidae
 

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