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horned larks (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter David Callahan
- Start date
Richard Klim
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Xenospiza
Distracted
Let me lower your expectations! It's a "Trends in systematics" article, not a taxonomic paper. It is not that thorough, but I hope it will be interesting enough.
Richard Klim
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van Steenis 2014
With links to the main on-line sources used for assessing distinctive features of seven proposed species...
van Steenis 2014. Taxonomy of 'horned larks'. Dutch Birding 36(3): 188–194.
With links to the main on-line sources used for assessing distinctive features of seven proposed species...
- Temminck's Horned Lark – Eremophila bilopha (monotypic)
- Atlas Horned Lark – Eremophila (alpestris) atlas (monotypic)
- Caucasian Horned Lark – Eremophila (alpestris) penicillata (incl balcanica, bicornis, albigula)
- Himalayan Horned Lark – Eremophila (alpestris) longirostris (incl teleschowi, argalea, elwesi, khamensis, nigrifrons)
- Shore Lark – Eremophila (alpestris) flava (monotypic)
- Steppe Horned Lark – Eremophila (alpestris) brandti (monotypic?)
- American Horned Lark – Eremophila (alpestris) alpestris (etc...)
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Jacana
Will Jones
Remember that permafrost bird that was found a few years ago? It has now been identified:
Nicolas Dussex, David W. G. Stanton, Hanna Sigeman, Per G. P. Ericson, Jacquelyn Gill, Daniel C. Fisher, Albert V. Protopopov, Victoria L. Herridge, Valery Plotnikov, Bengt Hansson & Love Dalén 2020. Biomolecular analyses reveal the age, sex and species identity of a near-intact Pleistocene bird carcass. Communications Biology volume 3, Article number: 84 https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-020-0806-7
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-0806-7
It's a Horned Lark, and theorised to be an ancestor of E. a. flava and E. a. brandti
Nicolas Dussex, David W. G. Stanton, Hanna Sigeman, Per G. P. Ericson, Jacquelyn Gill, Daniel C. Fisher, Albert V. Protopopov, Victoria L. Herridge, Valery Plotnikov, Bengt Hansson & Love Dalén 2020. Biomolecular analyses reveal the age, sex and species identity of a near-intact Pleistocene bird carcass. Communications Biology volume 3, Article number: 84 https://doi.org/10.1038/s42003-020-0806-7
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-020-0806-7
It's a Horned Lark, and theorised to be an ancestor of E. a. flava and E. a. brandti
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
Horned Larks all over twitter today! A new paper out with sampling of the isolated Colombian subspecies E. a. peregrina: https://www.g3journal.org/content/10/2/475 (open access).
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
Also this blog post reviewing the recent papers by Drovetski et al. (2014) and Ghorbani et al. (2019)*:
https://avianhybrids.wordpress.com/...ks-how-many-species-of-horned-lark-are-there/
* These two papers not mentioned in this thread, but I recall them being mentioned in some other thread in this forum, probably the general Alaudidae thread.
https://avianhybrids.wordpress.com/...ks-how-many-species-of-horned-lark-are-there/
* These two papers not mentioned in this thread, but I recall them being mentioned in some other thread in this forum, probably the general Alaudidae thread.
Andy Adcock
Worst person on Birdforum
Can someone outline the conclusions in 'dumb ass' please?
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
Not really sure there are any for the likes of us - they're just making sequences available from a previously unsampled outlying population available for others (like Drovetski or Ghorbani) to work with to compare with other populations.
Andy Adcock
Worst person on Birdforum
Thanks Nutty.
l_raty
laurent raty
Quick reconstruction based on Cytochrome b and ND2 (data from the dataset of Ghorbani et al 2020, plus the mitochondrial genome of peregrina reconstructed by Mason et al 2020 [here]).
Based on this, peregrina appears to be in the nominate group (Common Horned Lark of Ghorbani et al), and outside of the Eurasian subgroup; I recover it nested in the American goup, but it's not really close to any of the other included birds, and the support for the nodes in this part of the tree is generally not good, so I would not bet too much money on the topology being correct.
(Nothing really unexpected, thus.)
Based on this, peregrina appears to be in the nominate group (Common Horned Lark of Ghorbani et al), and outside of the Eurasian subgroup; I recover it nested in the American goup, but it's not really close to any of the other included birds, and the support for the nodes in this part of the tree is generally not good, so I would not bet too much money on the topology being correct.
(Nothing really unexpected, thus.)
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James Lowther
Well-known member
Thanks Laurent,
I was surprised Mason et al didn’t consider doing this already, it seems like quite an obvious thing to look at.
Anyway seems the position of peregrina in your tree doesn’t complicate or contradict either of the proposed new taxonomies (6+1 or 3+1)
Cheers
James
I was surprised Mason et al didn’t consider doing this already, it seems like quite an obvious thing to look at.
Anyway seems the position of peregrina in your tree doesn’t complicate or contradict either of the proposed new taxonomies (6+1 or 3+1)
Cheers
James
l_raty
laurent raty
Maybe this was simply not part of the authors' main preoccupations ?
As I understand the paper, the primary objective here was to produce a reference (complete -- i.e., mostly nuclear) genome for a lark.
They chose a bird from this particular spp mainly because it represents a small, highly isolated population, which they theorized had likely gone through a bottleneck when founded. When a population goes though a bottleneck, it loses genetic diversity, which increases the levels of homozygosity in the individuals that belong to it -- and high levels of homozygozity make the sequencing of nuclear DNA easier. (Because you have only one sequence to deal with, instead of two wherever the homologous chromosomes have different alleles.)
I see no real suggestion that the prospect of clarifying the relationships of the spp weighted particularly heavily on this choice.
dantheman
Bah humbug
Was that the one on social media or on here, with various 'guesses' such as a thrush or Starling??
James Lowther
Well-known member
Thanks for the explanation about the homozygosity, I didn’t pick that up. I understand that the taxonomic position of peregrina wasn’t a priority for them, but it seems like a “low hanging fruit” as a byproduct of their main study. Especially given the current interest in Eremophila taxonomy and the fact that peregrina was probably the most interesting subspecies that wasn’t included in the other studies.
Cheers
James
Jacana
Will Jones
Discussion in both places. Redwing was a strong contender for a while, before clearer photos emerged of the hind claw. Dont remember starling being mooted, though Swallow was definitely mentioned from the very first photo that appeared when they dug it out originally.
Fred Ruhe
Well-known member
Peter Kovalik
Well-known member
Vargas-Puentes, J.A., Arias-Sosa, L.A. & Ramos-Montaño, C. Song divergence indicates an unclear relationship between the Neotropical and Nearctic Horned Larks. Avian Res 12, 16 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40657-021-00251-y
Abstract:
Background
Some studies have indicated that the Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) should be considered as a species complex. Recently it split into four species or clades and seven subclades based on genetic, morphological, and biogeographic data. However, other aspects like song divergence have not been studied and several subspecies have not been evaluated, leading to important information gaps in this group of birds. In this work, we aimed to assess the differences in song traits and playback response between the Nearctic subclade and the Neotropical or Colombian subspecies E. a. peregrina.
Methods
We compared six song traits between these groups and performed field playback experiments, to test the response of the Neotropical larks to both songs. We tested the difference in the variables for separate as well as by principal component analysis (PCA).
Results
We found significant differences (p < 0.05) in the individual song traits and the PCA analysis between the two groups. Further, the PCA analysis showed a clearer divergence of the Neotropical songs in comparison to the Nearctic songs of different locations within North America. Similarly, the playback analysis showed a significantly lower response of E. a. peregrina to the songs of the Nearctic larks.
Conclusions
Besides this song divergence, there are important ecological and biogeographic differences between the Neotropical and Nearctic Horned Larks, that indicate an unclear relationship between these two groups. Thus, further morphological and genetic studies are required to clarify the taxonomy of the Neotropical Horned Lark and define if they share the same evolutionary history as the other subspecies of the Nearctic subclade.
[pdf]
Abstract:
Background
Some studies have indicated that the Horned Larks (Eremophila alpestris) should be considered as a species complex. Recently it split into four species or clades and seven subclades based on genetic, morphological, and biogeographic data. However, other aspects like song divergence have not been studied and several subspecies have not been evaluated, leading to important information gaps in this group of birds. In this work, we aimed to assess the differences in song traits and playback response between the Nearctic subclade and the Neotropical or Colombian subspecies E. a. peregrina.
Methods
We compared six song traits between these groups and performed field playback experiments, to test the response of the Neotropical larks to both songs. We tested the difference in the variables for separate as well as by principal component analysis (PCA).
Results
We found significant differences (p < 0.05) in the individual song traits and the PCA analysis between the two groups. Further, the PCA analysis showed a clearer divergence of the Neotropical songs in comparison to the Nearctic songs of different locations within North America. Similarly, the playback analysis showed a significantly lower response of E. a. peregrina to the songs of the Nearctic larks.
Conclusions
Besides this song divergence, there are important ecological and biogeographic differences between the Neotropical and Nearctic Horned Larks, that indicate an unclear relationship between these two groups. Thus, further morphological and genetic studies are required to clarify the taxonomy of the Neotropical Horned Lark and define if they share the same evolutionary history as the other subspecies of the Nearctic subclade.
[pdf]
Peter Boesman
Well-known member
After a quick read of this paper, I must say that the mentioned conclusions are rather an (over-)extrapollation, for which the validity was not discussed.
I would rather summarize the findings briefly as:
- The song of a population of peregrina from a single location was found different from a limited set of recordings of some of the Nearctic races. (In the suppl. inf. only 6 recordings of Nearctic races are mentioned, of the 20 recordings of peregrina deposited in XC, 5 are double. A least a few parameters in the boxplots such as min/max freq. would nolonger show such differences if a larger set of Nearctic recordings would be used.)
- The playback response to a single song phrase of the local population was higher than to a non-specified song phrase of a non-specified Nearctic race. (No attempt was made to check response of song from another location of peregrina, response was from birds in group suggesting this was not really territorial response but rather maintaining contact (?))
The conclusion <<We found significant differences in the song traits between the two groups. Similarly, the playback analysis showed a significantly lower response of E. a. peregrina to the songs of the Nearctic larks.>> is thus rather a hypothesis by extrapollation than a result, I would say.
The paper surely has its merits in pointing out a potential significant difference, but (as unfortunately often the case in papers) concludes in general terms for which there is no proof yet (rather than suggesting the next steps that should be taken to reach such general conclusion).
