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Caprimulgiformes (1 Viewer)

Jim LeNomenclatoriste said:
Ok. They surely have information we don't
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I know it's just one gene -- and, additionally, only a shortish part of it.
Yet, in my experience, when a mitochondrial tree shows a species included in a clade with a support of 100, adding data will not suddenly make the same species "very divergent" and place it half-way between this clade and some other, distant clade.
The only thing that I would regard as being likely to make the alternative position plausible, would be if one can provide a justified dismissal of the original mtDNA data. I.e., you should prove that this data was flawed.
 
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G. Sangster, S.M.S. Gregory & E.C. Dickinson 30 August 2023. The correct authorship of the family‐group name Eurostopodinae (Caprimulgidae). Avian Systematics 2023 1(X): N43–N47.
ABSTRACT: Multi‐locus phylogenetic studies of nightjars provide congruent support for a sisterrelationship between Eurostopodus Gould, 1838a and all other members of Caprimulgidae Vigors, 1825 (nightjars). In rank‐based nomenclature, these two groups are best recognised as subfamily taxa. We show that the name Eurostopodidae, used by Sibley, Ahlquist and Monroe in both 1986 and 1988, does not meet Article 13.1.1 of the ICZN Code (1999) in either publication and is unavailable. However, Sibley and Ahlquist (1990) used this name and gave a description of the morphology of this taxon, thereby making the name available for nomenclatural purposes.
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Mike Earp said:
G. Sangster, S.M.S. Gregory & E.C. Dickinson 30 August 2023. The correct authorship of the family‐group name Eurostopodinae (Caprimulgidae). Avian Systematics 2023 1(X): N43–N47.
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The paper seems to answer the question of the correct authorship for the group name, but does not really address why the "two groups are best recognised as subfamily taxa". The estimate of divergence time from Prum et al. (2015) seems to be about 33 MYA, which seems sufficient to me to justify family rank. And is there a formal family-group name for 'Lyncornidae'?
 
Jim LeNomenclatoriste said:
It was the option chosen by Sibley & al. Chen & al (2019) found the same result. However, White & Braun (2019) don't give a time tree.
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Actually, as noted in Sangster et al. 2023, Sibley et al. 1986 did treat Eurostopodidae as a family, although I believe that they also included the two species macrotis and temminckii, now placed in Lyncornis, in that family as well. Chen et al. 2019 only examined 3 species of 'nightjars', and it seems genetic data for only two, so I don't think they were focused on the divisions within this group as much as they were in the overall evolution of the Strisores.
 
The name "Eurostopodidae" was first used in:

Bennett HK. 1886. Notes on the habits, &c., of birds breeding in the interior of New South Wales. Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales, 10: 162-169.
p. 169 : v.10=[no.37-40] (1885-1886) - Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales - Biodiversity Heritage Library

Bennett used it only once, quite casually, without giving it an explicit rank, in a sentence where the flight of “Eurostopodidae” was compared to that of pratincoles; the name was not a simple generic plural, however, nor was it adjectival, and I'm not really clear which provision of the Code could be used to discard this introduction.

Any idea ?
 
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Jim Mountjoy said:
The paper seems to answer the question of the correct authorship for the group name, but does not really address why the "two groups are best recognised as subfamily taxa". The estimate of divergence time from Prum et al. (2015) seems to be about 33 MYA, which seems sufficient to me to justify family rank. And is there a formal family-group name for 'Lyncornidae'?
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If you split off Eurostopod- as a rank than you probably need to do the same to Lyncornis and Gactornis, as both are pretty old lineages IIRC. I have all three ranked as subfamilies alongside Caprimulginae in my own taxonomy

I'd mentioned it before here in other threads in more depth, but one should be very careful when interpreting divergence age data to assign ranks. Not all birds evolve at the same rate or responded to the same environmental and biotic events that spurred pulses of diversification, and folks didn't at all have this data when creating the original taxonomy. As an obvious example songbird families are overall really young compared to a lot of groups, so any sort of universal use of single dates to define whether something is a higher or lower rank would result in either massive lumping of songbirds, or the tearing apart of existing families into countless new families of little actual utility. My personal belief is that unless you have a monumentally old divergence, you should compare and contrast rank ages within specific clades, and use branch lengths.
 
Mysticete said:
If you split off Eurostopod- as a rank than you probably need to do the same to Lyncornis and Gactornis, as both are pretty old lineages IIRC. I have all three ranked as subfamilies alongside Caprimulginae in my own taxonomy

I'd mentioned it before here in other threads in more depth, but one should be very careful when interpreting divergence age data to assign ranks. Not all birds evolve at the same rate or responded to the same environmental and biotic events that spurred pulses of diversification, and folks didn't at all have this data when creating the original taxonomy. As an obvious example songbird families are overall really young compared to a lot of groups, so any sort of universal use of single dates to define whether something is a higher or lower rank would result in either massive lumping of songbirds, or the tearing apart of existing families into countless new families of little actual utility. My personal belief is that unless you have a monumentally old divergence, you should compare and contrast rank ages within specific clades, and use branch lengths.
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Kind of agree, kind of don't agree.

The "not all birds are evolving at the same rate" isn’t the strongest defence for recognising or not recognising families. It only really makes sense for interpreting diversity at lower taxonomic levels – species and genera.

This argument seems to only get used to justify the recognition of new 'families' amongst Passeriformes, especially the 9-primaried assemblage. Other groups with very high reproductive turnover and current, actively diversifying lineages – e.g. within Columbiformes and Galliformes - are not accorded the same treatment.

Also, compatible logic is not applied at the other end of the taxonomy – where all lineages over a certain age are now widely treated as orders.

I think that having approximate minimum ages for the recognition of genera, families, orders is a very helpful approach. It provides insight into actual evolution and diversity and helps mitigate against the subjectivity that different researchers bring into the mix.
 
l_raty said:
The name "Eurostopodidae" was first used in:

Bennett HK. 1886. Notes on the habits, &c., of birds breeding in the interior of New South Wales. Proc. Linn. Soc. N. S. Wales, 10: 162-169.
p. 169 : v.10=[no.37-40] (1885-1886) - Proceedings of the Linnean Society of New South Wales - Biodiversity Heritage Library

Bennett used it only once, quite casually, without giving it an explicit rank, in a sentence where the flight of “Eurostopodidae” was compared to that of pratincoles; the name was not a simple generic plural, however, nor was it adjectival, and I'm not really clear which provision of the Code could be used to discard this introduction.

Any idea ?
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Perhaps Art. 23.9 of the Code can be used, as Bennett's name may have been overlooked and has not been used after 1899. It seems that Sibley et al. coined the name Eurostopodidae independently and not because they referred to Bennett.
 
Norbert R. B. said:
Perhaps Art. 23.9 of the Code can be used, as Bennett's name may have been overlooked and has not been used after 1899. It seems that Sibley et al. coined the name Eurostopodidae independently and not because they referred to Bennett.
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I guess that's one way of seeing it.

I agree that in the present case, it seems utterly unlikely that Bennett played a role in the use of the name by Sibley et al. In a very large number of other cases, however, it is basically impossible to tell whether an author adopted a name proposed by an earlier author, or coined it himself a second (or third, or fourth...) time (thus, arguably, creating an invalid junior homonym, and not taking part in the history of usage of the original name), so I would prefer not to enter the path of the independent vs. non-independent coining for family-group names.

Also, following this path would create problems elsewhere, I believe. E.g. : there are quite a few family-group names in birds, which were introduced after 1931 and before 1961 without a description (by authors like Boetticher, Mathews, Verheyen, etc.), then used as valid once or twice before 2000 (often, again, without any description), and finally gained broader acceptance after 1999 (at which time they were not indicated a new). Such names can be claimed from their pre-1961 use under Art. 13.2.1. In most such cases, however, the later uses were made without reference to the initial pre-1961 use. Treating the pre-1961 and later uses as separate names would then often result in the name not being available at all...
 
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l_raty said:
I guess that's one way of seeing it.

I agree that in the present case, it seems utterly unlikely that Bennett played a role in the use of the name by Sibley et al. In a very large number of other cases, however, it is basically impossible to tell whether an author adopted a name proposed by an earlier author, or coined it himself a second (or third, or fourth...) time (thus, arguably, creating an invalid junior homonym, and not taking part in the history of usage of the original name), so I would prefer not to enter the path of the independent vs. non-independent coining for family-group names.

Also, following this path would create problems elsewhere, I believe. E.g. : there are quite a few family-group names in birds, which were introduced after 1931 and before 1961 without a description (by authors like Boetticher, Mathews, Verheyen, etc.), then used as valid once or twice before 2000 (often, again, without any description), and finally gained broader acceptance after 1999 (at which time they were not indicated a new). Such names can be claimed from their pre-1961 use under Art. 13.2.1. In most such cases, however, the later uses were made without reference to the initial pre-1961 use. Treating the pre-1961 and later uses as separate names would then often result in the name not being available at all...
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In the case of Eurostopodidae, even Schadde & Mason (1997) in their very careful compiled Catalogue of Australian birds did not mention Bennett. I wouldn't want to 'wake sleeping dogs' and take Bennett's perhaps inadvertently introduced name for what it is: a nomen oblitum. Unless you can show that the name was used after 1899 and bevor 1986, exactly 100 years after it was introduced by Bennett (1886).
 

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