Fringillidae (1 Viewer)

So, canariensis is elevated to species rank :h?:

I know it's a boring issue, but can we hope for a ZooBank registration ?

(Cf. the recent Atronanus in the same journal, which is not registered. As a reminder, the journal is now online-only:
http://ornithologyexchange.org/jour...ogical-journals/journal-of-avian-biology-r29/
https://ordering.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/subs.asp?ref=1600-048X&doi=10.1111/(ISSN)1600-048X
https://twitter.com/AvianBiology/status/965529084506886145
A print-on-demand service is available from Sheridan, as per the Wiley web page linked above; but copies obtained on demand of an unpublished work [assuming copies would actually have been demanded, which is by no means guaranteed] are expressly excluded from what constitutes published work by ICZN 9.12.
Under the current Code, any work appearing in this journal from 2015 onwards is NOT published for the purposes of nomenclature, unless it includes evidence that it was registered with ZooBank before being issued. [And unless the entry in ZooBank specifies an online archive intended for the work and the ISSN of the journal, these being currently not set for the journal as a whole. The archive appear to be what is most frequently forgotten; it must only to be present in Zoobank, not in the work itself, thus can still be added after the fact; but the consensus seems to be that the work will then date, for the the purposes of priority, from when the archive was added.])

These things CAN affect name precedence, if another name gets published while the original one is still in limbos. I don't know actual cases in birds so far, but see, e.g., [this].

There is a lil' mistake in the abstract, it's not Fringilla canariensis bakeri ssp. nov., but Fringilla coelebs bakeri ssp. nov.

LeNomenclatoriste said:

So, canariensis is elevated to species rank :h?:

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LeNomenclatoriste said:

There is a lil' mistake in the abstract, it's not Fringilla canariensis bakeri ssp. nov., but Fringilla coelebs bakeri ssp. nov.

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I don’t think it’s a mistake, but most likely done on purpose. In the text, the authors followed the most widely used taxonomic treatment (i.e. canariensis – and thus also bakeri – as subspecies of the Common Chaffinch). In the abstract, they referred to the Canary Chaffinch as a distinct species, probably to underscore their preferred treatment of the group. We will see if gets changed or not in the final paper.

Quote from Illera et al. 2016 (Ardeola 63: 15-33):

Thus, the Macaronesian chaffinches should be named as follows: Fringilla moreletti (Pucheran, 1859) on the Azores, Fringilla maderensis (Sharpe, 1888) on Madeira and Fringilla canariensis (Vieillot, 1917) on the Canary Islands.

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Acrocephalus said:

I don’t think it’s a mistake, but most likely done on purpose. In the text, the authors followed the most widely used taxonomic treatment (i.e. canariensis – and thus also bakeri – as subspecies of the Common Chaffinch). In the abstract, they referred to the Canary Chaffinch as a distinct species, probably to underscore their preferred treatment of the group. We will see if gets changed or not in the final paper.

Quote from Illera et al. 2016 (Ardeola 63: 15-33):

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Oh oh Vieillot, 1817 (not 1917)

Chlorophonia, Euphonia, "Cyanophonia"

Tyler S Imfeld, F Keith Barker, Robb T Brumfield, Mitochondrial genomes and thousands of ultraconserved elements resolve the taxonomy and historical biogeography of the Euphonia and Chlorophonia finches (Passeriformes: Fringillidae), The Auk, , ukaa016, https://doi.org/10.1093/auk/ukaa016

Abstract:

Relationships of the Neotropical finches in the genera Euphonia and Chlorophonia (Fringillidae: Euphoniinae) have been clarified by recent molecular studies, but species-level relationships within this group have not been thoroughly addressed. In this study, we sampled specimens representing every recognized species of these genera, in addition to 2 outgroup taxa, and used target enrichment to sequence thousands of ultraconserved element (UCE) loci, as well as mitochondrial DNA reconstructed from off-target reads, from each specimen to infer these relationships. We constructed both concatenation and coalescent-based estimates of phylogeny from this dataset using matrices of varying levels of completeness, and we generated a time-scaled ultrametric tree using a recently published fossil-based external calibration. We found uniformly strong support for a monophyletic subfamily Euphoniinae and genus Chlorophonia, but a paraphyletic Euphonia across UCEs and mitochondrial genomes. Otherwise, our inferred relationships were largely concordant with previous studies. Our time-tree indicated a stem divergence time of 13.8 million years ago for this lineage, followed by a relatively young crown age of only 7.1 myr. Reconstructions of biogeographic history based on this tree suggest a South American origin for crown Euphoniinae, possibly resulting from a transoceanic dispersal event from the Eastern Hemisphere, followed by 2 dispersal events into the Caribbean and as many as 6 invasions of North America coinciding with recent estimates of the age at which the Isthmus of Panama had completely formed. We recommend splitting Euphonia and resurrecting the genus Cyanophonia for the 3 blue-hooded species more closely related to Chlorophonia. Based on our results, we suspect that there is undescribed species-level diversity in at least one, possibly many, widespread and phenotypically diverse species.

With thanks to Tom Schulenberg for bringing this article to our attention.

Peter Kovalik said:

Tyler S Imfeld, F Keith Barker, Robb T Brumfield, Mitochondrial genomes and thousands of ultraconserved elements resolve the taxonomy and historical biogeography of the Euphonia and Chlorophonia finches (Passeriformes: Fringillidae), The Auk, , ukaa016, https://doi.org/10.1093/auk/ukaa016

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Re:

Despite the description of this genus in 1851, to our knowledge, a type species has never been formally designated for the genus Cyanophonia. Of the 3 recognized species in this genus, musica was described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in part 2 of the 13th edition of Systema Naturae (1789) and is older than both cyanocephala (1819) and elegantissima (1838). Therefore, we designate the Antillean Euphonia, Cyanophonia musica (Linnaeus and Gmelin 1789), as the type species for the genus.

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Bonaparte 1851 included the nominal species Pipra musica Gmelin 1789 and Tanagra aureata [nec 'aurita'] Vieillot 1822, the latter with Tanagra nigricollis Vieillot 1819 and Euphonia caeruleocephala Swainson 1837 cited as (subjective) synonyms. These four nominal species (and no other) were eligible to become the type by subsequent designation. (I.e., there is absolutely no way that "cyanocephala (1819)" or "elegantissima (1838)" could have been made the type, as neither is an originally included nominal species of Cyanophonia.)

The type is Pipra musica Gmelin 1789 by designation in: Sclater PL. 1886. Catalogue of the Passeriformes or perching birds in the collection of the British Museum. Fringilliformes: part II. Containing the families Coerebidae, Tanagridae, and Icteridae. Catalogue of the birds in the Britsh Museum. Volume XI. British Museum, London.; p. 58; https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8326328.

(Note also that a type designation in the present work could not be valid anyway, because the work is not published in the sense of the Code. Auk is online only: the work should include evidence that it was registered in ZooBank to be published, and it doesn't. A nomenclatural act which is not published in the sense of the Code, does not exist -- this is as true for a type designation, as it is for the description of a new taxon.)

Peter Kovalik said:

Tyler S Imfeld, F Keith Barker, Robb T Brumfield, Mitochondrial genomes and thousands of ultraconserved elements resolve the taxonomy and historical biogeography of the Euphonia and Chlorophonia finches (Passeriformes: Fringillidae), The Auk, , ukaa016, https://doi.org/10.1093/auk/ukaa016

Abstract:

Relationships of the Neotropical finches in the genera Euphonia and Chlorophonia (Fringillidae: Euphoniinae) have been clarified by recent molecular studies, but species-level relationships within this group have not been thoroughly addressed. In this study, we sampled specimens representing every recognized species of these genera, in addition to 2 outgroup taxa, and used target enrichment to sequence thousands of ultraconserved element (UCE) loci, as well as mitochondrial DNA reconstructed from off-target reads, from each specimen to infer these relationships. We constructed both concatenation and coalescent-based estimates of phylogeny from this dataset using matrices of varying levels of completeness, and we generated a time-scaled ultrametric tree using a recently published fossil-based external calibration. We found uniformly strong support for a monophyletic subfamily Euphoniinae and genus Chlorophonia, but a paraphyletic Euphonia across UCEs and mitochondrial genomes. Otherwise, our inferred relationships were largely concordant with previous studies. Our time-tree indicated a stem divergence time of 13.8 million years ago for this lineage, followed by a relatively young crown age of only 7.1 myr. Reconstructions of biogeographic history based on this tree suggest a South American origin for crown Euphoniinae, possibly resulting from a transoceanic dispersal event from the Eastern Hemisphere, followed by 2 dispersal events into the Caribbean and as many as 6 invasions of North America coinciding with recent estimates of the age at which the Isthmus of Panama had completely formed. We recommend splitting Euphonia and resurrecting the genus Cyanophonia for the 3 blue-hooded species more closely related to Chlorophonia. Based on our results, we suspect that there is undescribed species-level diversity in at least one, possibly many, widespread and phenotypically diverse species.

With thanks to Tom Schulenberg for bringing this article to our attention.

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One of these species mentioned is Antillean Euphonia. Already in the early 2000s I was told that the genetic data necessary to split the Lesser Antillean birds had been produced, but seemingly no one ever published this.

Niels

So they would split the blue-hooded taxa in a separate genus rather than lumping with Chlorophonia, all the while maintaining the more deeply divergent Euphonia as a single genus.

I swear, if a taxonomist were to analyze a human family, they'd insist a blue-eyed, blond-haired child be ranked as a separate family from its own brown-eyed, brown-haired parents. *sigh*

Snapdragyn said:

So they would split the blue-hooded taxa in a separate genus rather than lumping with Chlorophonia, all the while maintaining the more deeply divergent Euphonia as a single genus.

I swear, if a taxonomist were to analyze a human family, they'd insist a blue-eyed, blond-haired child be ranked as a separate family from its own brown-eyed, brown-haired parents. *sigh*

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There's never been any sense in which genera (or families or any other taxonomic unit) are "equivalent". The modern aim is to make them monophyletic. Even if you employed some distance metric to make your classification (something like dna-dna hybridisation to estimate DNA similarity), you wouldn't be reflecting "real" similarity [whatever that means]. Some things are seriously divergent in terms of age of split or DNA difference but appear pretty identical in terms of plumage, diet, ecology etc. Other things are recently diverged but highly distinctive, at least to human eyes. Taxonomy is an important, useful, subjective and artistic pursuit. There never will be, nor, I believe should there be, one single right taxonomy. That's why you can easily find 4+ comprehensive world bird taxonomies which disagree.

My point entirely is that, in my view, there SHOULD be equivalence across taxonomic ranks. Let taxonomy be a science with the same rigors expected of other sciences, including basic operational definitions of the terms it uses.

We have chosen to update the field to insist upon monophyletic groupings. If we can accept that these are more indicative of real similarity than 'these things look a lot alike to the human eye' (as in the suggestion to remove 3 species from Euphonia despite visual similarities), then I believe we should also be able to accept that our limited view (heh) of 'similarity' based on human visual perception capabilities is not the best metric by which to define taxonomic ranks. Let us instead use some other measure - perhaps some degree of sequence divergence - & simply accept that this may produce groupings that appear odd to us because of our own perceptual limits.

Snapdragyn said:

My point entirely is that, in my view, there SHOULD be equivalence across taxonomic ranks.

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Great in theory but impossible to achieve. Equivalent in what sense?

E.g. Number of branching events since the root of the tree the same? ...then you'll end up with groups of wildly different ages / levels of divergence. Age since root the same? Same thing applies—some groups will be very different.Taxonomies are a convenience and need to meet many different needs.

>>If we can accept that these are more indicative of real similarity

The distance between two taxa on a phylogenetic tree [their molecular similarity if you like] is generally correlated with how similar their traits appear—behaviour, ecology, colouration etc. Another way of putting this is that if you know nothing about a bird except its evolutionary relationships you can guess what it's going to be like from things which are closely related to it.

However, this is a broad correlation only and there are plenty of exceptions. How useful knowledge of the evolutionary history of something is depends quite a bit what type of thing it is you're trying to guess. Some traits mirror relatedness quite closely, others are more influenced by other things and are idiosyncratic. Even within the same organism, different genes may show different patterns of relatedness—one gene might indicate that the species is most closely related to one thing, another gene to another. This is one reason why molecular studies try to include several different genes and [these days] both nuclear and mitochondrial sequences. The aim is to come up with a kind of "average" phylogeny which in some way reflects the history of the overall organism rather than any one set of its constituent genes.

For a long time biologists have realised that how things look may not indicate their true patterns of relatedness. Sharks and dolphins appear "similar", for example. More recently, it's become clear that the same's true of molecules. One way this can happen is when the same bit of DNA mutates several times—switches and then switches back. This makes it appear as though very little change has happened when in fact lots has. It can also make things which are distantly related appear to be close, and the problem tends to be greater the longer the branches are or the older the group in question ["long branches attract"]. In some some sense these sequences may be very similar according to some measures but this similarity is incidental and doesn't reflect relatedness. So alas there isn't really one "real similarity": similarity depends on what you're tying to measure.

There was a paper by Avise sometimes back that I read in grad school that tried to do just that...scale the linnean ranks so that they were roughly equivalent across taxa. I don't remember the specific details, but the overall jist was that by genetic diversity or time, a single genus of insect was equivalent to entire orders of mammals. While within class variation isn't that huge, there are still pretty big inconsistencies, and trying to reconcile them would result in pretty huge disruptions of taxonomic order. Not everything evolves at the same rate, and not every equivalently genetically distinct lineage has the same degrees of morphological divergence. Even when people try to use some general rubric they tend to hand waive away discrepancies. SACC often cites divergence age in justification of splitting ranks at the order and family level, however most 9-primaried oscine families are far far younger in age than groups outside that clade. But a family of 900+ species is useless from an organizational standpoint, so it's better to break them down further.

Mysticete said:

...same degrees of morphological divergence.

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Yup. And there's the question of how you even quantify that (morphological divergence). I understand why it's desirable to have a single classification from some points of view, but personally I like the fact there are several different ones which (in effect) use different weightings for different characters.

Mysticete said:

But a family of 900+ species is useless from an organizational standpoint, so it's better to break them down further.

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Surely it is tradition ('nomenclatural stability'), rather than organisation which is the driving force here?

People are reluctant to relinquish their Parulidae and their Icteridae, and the only way to retain these - and to avoid paraphyly - is to recognise 'families' which are so recent, they only really qualify as genera (e.g. Teretistridae, Nesospingidae).

Organisation would come from a large coherent family, roughly equivalent in age and diversity to other Avian families, structured with multiple subfamilies and tribes. In contrast, the recognition of 16 or more families in this group is chaotic and disorderly, and actually undermines the entire concept of organising birds into families.

Overlumping at taxonomic levels can cause issues in that you then have to start using less and less commonly used taxonomic ranks to carve up groups. I mean, IIRC at one point many taxonomies had one giant fringillidae that included almost all the nine-primaried oscines, based on the Sibley-Alquist early DNA work. Clearly that rubbed people the wrong way and it wasn't maintained. Stability is a perfectly good reason to maintain one classification over another, especially since any organizing principle to use will have exceptions to the rule (for instance, molecular clock rates almost certainly are not the same across all avian taxa)

Neither approach is wrong, and it comes down to preference: Some people prefer to carve things up into higher taxonomic ranks with more equivalent levels of diversity, while others like to use criteria such as genetic divergence/date of divergence to try for equivalency.

Peter Kovalik said:

Tyler S Imfeld, F Keith Barker, Robb T Brumfield, Mitochondrial genomes and thousands of ultraconserved elements resolve the taxonomy and historical biogeography of the Euphonia and Chlorophonia finches (Passeriformes: Fringillidae), The Auk, , ukaa016, https://doi.org/10.1093/auk/ukaa016

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AOS: Unraveling the Origins and Family Tree of the Euphonia and Chlorophonia Finches

Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Kovalik View Post
Tyler S Imfeld, F Keith Barker, Robb T Brumfield, Mitochondrial genomes and thousands of ultraconserved elements resolve the taxonomy and historical biogeography of the Euphonia and Chlorophonia finches (Passeriformes: Fringillidae), The Auk, , ukaa016, https://doi.org/10.1093/auk/ukaa016
Re:
Quote:
Despite the description of this genus in 1851, to our knowledge, a type species has never been formally designated for the genus Cyanophonia. Of the 3 recognized species in this genus, musica was described by Johann Friedrich Gmelin in part 2 of the 13th edition of Systema Naturae (1789) and is older than both cyanocephala (1819) and elegantissima (1838). Therefore, we designate the Antillean Euphonia, Cyanophonia musica (Linnaeus and Gmelin 1789), as the type species for the genus.
Bonaparte 1851 included the nominal species Pipra musica Gmelin 1789 and Tanagra aureata [nec 'aurita'] Vieillot 1822, the latter with Tanagra nigricollis Vieillot 1819 and Euphonia caeruleocephala Swainson 1837 cited as (subjective) synonyms. These four nominal species (and no other) were eligible to become the type by subsequent designation. (I.e., there is absolutely no way that "cyanocephala (1819)" or "elegantissima (1838)" could have been made the type, as neither is an originally included nominal species of Cyanophonia.)

The type is Pipra musica Gmelin 1789 by designation in: Sclater PL. 1886. Catalogue of the Passeriformes or perching birds in the collection of the British Museum. Fringilliformes: part II. Containing the families Coerebidae, Tanagridae, and Icteridae. Catalogue of the birds in the Britsh Museum. Volume XI. British Museum, London.; p. 58; https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/8326328.

(Note also that a type designation in the present work could not be valid anyway, because the work is not published in the sense of the Code. Auk is online only: the work should include evidence that it was registered in ZooBank to be published, and it doesn't. A nomenclatural act which is not published in the sense of the Code, does not exist -- this is as true for a type designation, as it is for the description of a new taxon.)

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Lovely work Laurent and it took you less than 3 hours! The strange lack of Auk requiring zoo bank registration is not boring. I was wondering if you agree with Sclater from may 1851 that if you seperate the blue hooded birds the genus needs to be Euphonia since musica is the type of that genus?
Sclater 1851: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/213244#page/338/mode/1up .
Page 12 is the page number in the seperate . Ridgway agreed and suggested Ypophaea for what was left of the Euphonia.??
https://books.google.com/books?id=2...sQ6AEwAHoECAcQAQ#v=onepage&q=Ypophaea&f=false . The type of that genus is E. chalybea.
Mikan T. chalybea: http://mertzdigital.nybg.org/cdm/ref/collection/p9016coll23/id/3290 . On side look at Tanagra II for drawing. Wetmore said this book was rare I had never heard of Mikan.

What I have about Euphonia in my notes is:

Thank you Laurent. A little confusing. SACC says:

7. The genus Euphonia was formerly (e.g., Hellmayr 1936, Zimmer 1943a, Pinto 1944, Phelps & Phelps 1950a, Meyer de Schauensee 1966) known as Tanagra, but see ICZN (1968).

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ICZN 1968 must be the Bulletin you cited?