Chestnut-headed Crake (1 Viewer)

Hi all!

Does anyone have info on the systematic (and true taxonomic) whereabouts for Chestnut-headed Crake (Anurolimnas/Rufirallus castaneiceps)?

There seems to be an extreme lack of consensus between IOC/Clements/BLI, both concerning correct genus and priority. Clements puts it in Anurolimnas, along with viridis and fasciatus. IOC limits Anurolimnas to castaneiceps, placing the others in Laterallus. BLI/HBW moves castaneiceps and viridis to Rufirallus (citing priority issues: Bonaparte, 1856 over Sharpe, 1893).

In the Garcia-R (2014) tree, they have, peculiarly, a tight clade of "Anurolimnas viridis" and "Laterallus viridis" (whatever that means, a typo for castaneiceps or did they only sample viridis?) sister to Laterallus, Haplocrex, the Dot-winged Crake and Coturnicops. Fasciatus is closest to melanophaius and together sister to the remaining group.

So viridis and fasciatus are definitely "Lateralline". But what about castaneiceps? John Boyd places it, for some unexplained reason, as basal to a clade with Rallus, Gallirallus and the like, way off from Laterallus. Can't find any genetic studies on it. And does Rufirallus have priority over Anurolimnas or not?

gusasp said:

There seems to be an extreme lack of consensus between IOC/Clements/BLI, both concerning correct genus and priority. Clements puts it in Anurolimnas, along with viridis and fasciatus. IOC limits Anurolimnas to castaneiceps, placing the others in Laterallus. BLI/HBW moves castaneiceps and viridis to Rufirallus (citing priority issues: Bonaparte, 1856 over Sharpe, 1893).

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The type of Rufirallus Bonaparte 1856 is, by designation of Sclater & Salvin 1869, Rallus cayennensis Gmelin 1789, a syn. of Rallus viridis Statius Müller 1776.
The type of Anurolimnas Sharpe 1893 is, by original designation, Porzana castaneiceps Sclater & Salvin 1869.
Rufirallus was used as valid during the 20th C (e.g., here): there is no way that it could be deemed a nomen oblitum; thus it takes precedence over any name proposed at a later date. But of course, it only applies if the group to be named includes its type species.

IOC and BLI/HBW have their nomenclature correct (given their respective taxonomies). Clements' (and SACC's) nomenclature is factually wrong.

In the Garcia-R (2014) tree, they have, peculiarly, a tight clade of "Anurolimnas viridis" and "Laterallus viridis" (whatever that means, a typo for castaneiceps or did they only sample viridis?) sister to Laterallus, Haplocrex, the Dot-winged Crake and Coturnicops. Fasciatus is closest to melanophaius and together sister to the remaining group.

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They only have viridis in their dataset. "Laterallus viridis" is five sequences (b-fib7, RAG1, 16S, cytb, cox1) which they produced themselves; "Anurolimnas viridis" is an additional cox1 sequence (JQ174052) which they took from GenBank. (It's quite easy to overlook the fact that a taxon is represented twice in a data set, when the two samples are placed under different generic appellations. The retention of this "Anurolimnas viridis" along with their own "Laterallus viridis" doesn't really seem to be something that could have been useful for the analysis; it might well not have been deliberate, I think.)
(NB: Hapalocrex, of course.)

So viridis and fasciatus are definitely "Lateralline". But what about castaneiceps? John Boyd places it, for some unexplained reason, as basal to a clade with Rallus, Gallirallus and the like, way off from Laterallus. Can't find any genetic studies on it.

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The only genetic data that I'm aware of for castaneiceps is a single partial sequence of the mitochondrial 12S-rRNA gene, from a study published 22 years ago (Trewick 1997; U77156). That study included no other putative "Lateralline" taxa, thus the published tree is not really useful to answer your question. 12S has never been sequenced for viridis or fasciatus, thus no direct comparison with these two taxa can be done either. There are published 12S sequences for Atlantisia rogersi, Coturnicops exquisitus, and Laterallus melanophaius; these tend to cluster together, but the castaneiceps sequence does not cluster with them; neither does it cluster clearly with any other available sequence, actually. Assuming that this sequence is correct (which is probably untestable without getting more data than we have now), castaneiceps would not seem likely to be a core-"Lateralline" (= the "Laterallus" clade in Garcia-R et al, minus the basal-most branch (= viridis)); but we can't say much more than that, I'm afraid.
For what it's worth, Livezey 1998 (osteological/myological/integumentary characters) did not recover castaneiceps close to any putative "Lateralline" species either.

And does Rufirallus have priority over Anurolimnas or not?

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See above.

Thank you so much! Yes, Hapalocrex, a slip of the finger...

l_raty said:

For what it's worth, Livezey 1998 (osteological/myological/integumentary characters) did not recover castaneiceps close to any putative "Lateralline" species either.

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I also isolated castaneiceps in his own genus, following boyd, but I have reservations about the reliability of the results of Livezey.

I find that the Howard and Moore checklist is very good at nomenclature issues like this. And its explanation for Rufirallus matches what Laurent said, except that it has 1868 for the date of Sclater & Salvin rather than 1869.

It also has a footnote which says

For the precedence of this name over Anurolimnus see Pennhalurick (2003).

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Which is here:

Penhallurick, J., 2003. Notes on some genera and subgenera of rails (Rallidae). – Bulletin of the British Ornithologists’ Club, 123 (1): 33‐45.

You can find that in the BHL: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/124973#page/61/mode/1up

Paul Clapham said:

except that it has 1868 for the date of Sclater & Salvin rather than 1869.

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It's in the last (third) part of the PZS volume for 1868, which (as was usual for last parts of PZS volumes) was published in the next year (Apr 1869 according to Richmond, see [Zoonomen]).
The type designation for Rufirallus (p. 450) and the description of Porzana castaneiceps (p. 453 -- for links see my previous post, above) are in the same paper; the latter is dated to 1869 in H&M.

I am sure Howard and Moore follows Dickinson 2006.
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._breaks_between_calendar_years_of_publication . Table 1 .

Paul Clapham said:

I find that the Howard and Moore checklist is very good at nomenclature issues like this. And its explanation for Rufirallus matches what Laurent said, except that it has 1868 for the date of Sclater & Salvin rather than 1869.

It also has a footnote which says

For the precedence of this name over Anurolimnus see Pennhalurick (2003).​

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H&M spelling is (correctly) Penhallurick.

mb1848 said:

I am sure Howard and Moore follows Dickinson 2006.
https://www.researchgate.net/public..._breaks_between_calendar_years_of_publication . Table 1 .

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If H&M (Dickinson & Remsen) followed Dickinson then they would have given the date of Sclater & Salvin as 1869.