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Birds of paradise (1 Viewer)

Thanks Daniel ! One of the most fascinating findings I have read on these birds in a long time. Seems like Frith and Beehler can write a completely new monograph eleven years after their major study. Greatest surprise for me is the generic separation of Parotia carolae. I'm sure it will eventually break down in several species. Especially in Papua New Guinea the taxonomic situation of this bird is quite complex. But first they have to find every population there is, let alone sample them.
 
Phylogeny, biogeography and taxonomic consequences in a bird-of-paradise species complex, Lophorina–Ptiloris (Aves: Paradisaeidae)

Biogeographical history and taxonomic delimitation in the Australo-Papuan bird-of-paradise Lophorina–Ptiloris species complex is examined with a combination of DNA and morphological markers. The results suggest that the complex started to diverge in the mid-Pliocene, driven by initial isolation and adaptation to altitudinally different habitats. As in many other New Guinean avian taxa, phylogeographic structure is more varied in montane Lophorina than foothill Ptiloris. With the exception of populations of Lophorina in the eastern New Guinean cordillera, phylogenetic patterns from molecular data and morphological discontinuities are consistently concordant, as are molecular species delimitation tests with previous morphology-based circumscription of taxa in Ptiloris. In Lophorina, however, both molecular data and significant, re-discovered morphological traits identify several taxa as more deeply differentiated than hitherto thought. Accordingly, we use these data in an integrative taxonomic approach to re-delimit taxa in the entire clade, including the recognition of three species in the previously monospecific Lophorina. In Lophorina, the identity of several type specimens is reviewed, one new subspecies is described from the Vogelkop, and the identity of the species name superba Pennant is resolved by neotypification, with correction of its author.
https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean...axonomic-consequences?redirectedFrom=fulltext

From the article:

Lophorina niedda inopinata subsp. nov. Holotype: AMNH 294594, ♀ adult, collected on 13 May 1928, by Ernst Mayr no. 602 – type locality: Siwi, Arfak Mountains, Vogelkop, West Papua.

Lophorina niedda is split from Lophorina superba.

There are two subspecies:

Lophorina niedda niedda
Lophorina niedda inopinata

In the case of Lophorina superba there are the following subspecies.

L. superba superba (with L. superba feminina as synonym)
L. superba addenda
L. superba latipennis

Lophorina minor is split from Lophorina superba
 
I had anticipated this split, the females of this species in the Arfaks are just so different to the central and eastern birds, if species were described on female plumages then it would have been obvious-see parallels with whistlers and wheatears where highly distinct females were likewise not considered for species delimitation.
My new field guide has this note:
Male distinctive. Female-plumaged birds resemble parotias, but Carola’s has pale eye and forehead; E sub- species told from Magnificent Bird-of-paradise and Lawes’s Parotia female plumages by superciliary stripe, W NG subspecies with dark head told from Western Parotia by longer bill, paler less chestnut plumage, paler underparts, lack of blue eye. TN Genetic work on the three subspecies groups required, as there are quite marked vocal differences among them, as well as strikingly distinct female plumages, with minor poorly known (and sphinx virtually unknown). W birds, at least, seem good candidates for a split.
I will be interested to see how they delimit the new subspecies, and how different it is.
 
Phylogeny, biogeography and taxonomic consequences in a bird-of-paradise species complex, Lophorina–Ptiloris (Aves: Paradisaeidae)

Can anyone send me a pdf of this paper please? The link gives just an abstract and I can't access the full text.
Thanks
 
Phylogeny, biogeography and taxonomic consequences in a bird-of-paradise species complex, Lophorina–Ptiloris (Aves: Paradisaeidae)

Can anyone send me a pdf of this paper please? The link gives just an abstract and I can't access the full text.
Thanks


Me too please, thank you very moche.

Is the paraphyly of Lophorina with Ptiloris confirmed?
 
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Can anybody explain in layman's terms how this new taxonomy reconciles with that in HBW?

I'm struggling to understand how superbus can be applied to eastern birds, when the type specimen of Superb BoP (s.l.) was apparently a bird from the Arfak Mountains, which now seem to be included under L.niedde.

In other words, I would have expected Vogelkop head and neck birds to be split as L.superbus superbus (Arfaks) and L.superbus niedde (Wandammen Peninsula), and eastern birds to be L.latipennis.

Thanks
Duncan

Phylogeny, biogeography and taxonomic consequences in a bird-of-paradise species complex, Lophorina–Ptiloris (Aves: Paradisaeidae)


https://academic.oup.com/zoolinnean...axonomic-consequences?redirectedFrom=fulltext

From the article:



Lophorina niedda is split from Lophorina superba.

There are two subspecies:

Lophorina niedda niedda
Lophorina niedda inopinata

In the case of Lophorina superba there are the following subspecies.

L. superba superba (with L. superba feminina as synonym)
L. superba addenda
L. superba latipennis

Lophorina minor is split from Lophorina superba
 
Can anybody explain in layman's terms how this new taxonomy reconciles with that in HBW?

I'm struggling to understand how superbus can be applied to eastern birds, when the type specimen of Superb BoP (s.l.) was apparently a bird from the Arfak Mountains, which now seem to be included under L.niedde.



Thanks
Duncan

First of all it is female superba instead of male superbus. And the other thing. The range of niedda (not niedde) and superba is redescribed.

From the article

Lophorina niedda niedda:

Range: mountains of the Wandammen Peninsula, Bird’s Neck, West Papua, c. 1200–2000 m a.s.l.

Lophorina superba superba:

Range: western cordillera, between the Kobowre
Mountains, West Papua and Sepik–Strickland River
Divide, far West PNG, c. 1200–2200 m a.s.l., evidently
intergrading with addenda eastwards through the
Lagaip-upper Kikori River drainages.

By the way Lophorina superba sphinx is now regarded as synonym of Lophorina minor.
 
So addenda is resurrected in this new sequence. In recent literature it was regarded a synonym of latipennis together with connectens. What are the differences ?
 
I'm struggling to understand how superbus can be applied to eastern birds, when the type specimen of Superb BoP (s.l.) was apparently a bird from the Arfak Mountains, which now seem to be included under L.niedde.

They re-identified the type of superba from the illustrations (Paradisea superba Pennant 1781 ["OD"] is based on [Martinet's planche enluminée 632]; [Sonnerat 1776] shows the same bird), attributing it to the Central Cordillera–Papuan Peninsula populations, and, arguing that the type is demonstrably lost (*) and that their re-interpretation might be doubted or disputed, they designated a neotype from these populations.

As a result, the Arfak mountains birds lost their name; so they described them as new ssp. inopinata.

(*) I see no actual evidence in the paper that they looked for it, however. They just cited [Levaillant 1806:46-47] in support of it having "disintegrated, destroyed by sulphur fumigation intended to rid the Cabinet du Roi of dermestid infestation", and proceeded. I do not read Levaillant's text as meaning this, however. Levaillant wrote that he had seen the bird and that it was in an overall deteriorated state ("est aujourd'hui entièrement dégradé"); not that it had been destroyed. (This is potentially problematic for the validity of the neotype designation.)
 
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So addenda is resurrected in this new sequence. In recent literature it was regarded a synonym of latipennis together with connectens. What are the differences ?
"It has the superba haplotype but a somewhat variable latipennis phenotype that may be stabilizing with incipiently divergent traits: loss of mantle spotting and warmer cream ventra in female plumage (Table 3). Whether this mix of character states has resulted from lineage sorting, mtDNA sweep or morphologically expressed gene flow, the combined morphological and mtDNA signature of the eastern cordillera population is regional in scale."
 
They re-identified the type of superba from the illustrations (Paradisea superba Pennant 1781 ["OD"] is based on [Martinet's planche enluminée 632]; [Sonnerat 1776] shows the same bird), attributing it to the Central Cordillera–Papuan Peninsula populations and, arguing that the type is demonstrably lost (*) and that their re-interpretation might be doubted or disputed, they designated a neotype from these populations.

As a result, the Arfak mountains birds lost their name; so they described them as new ssp. inopinata.

(*) I see no actual evidence in the paper that they looked for it, however. They just cited [Levaillant 1806:46-47] in support of it having "disintegrated, destroyed by sulphur fumigation intended to rid the Cabinet du Roi of dermestid infestation", and proceeded. I do not read Levaillant's text as meaning this, however. Levaillant wrote that he had seen the bird and that it was in an overall deteriorated state ("est aujourd'hui entièrement dégradé"); not that it had been destroyed. (This is potentially problematic for the validity of the neotype designation.)

Thanks - that answers my question!
 
I'm getting more and more puzzled by this. They re-identified nominate superba from those, may I say not very accurate, illustrations ? It's not plausible at all that the earliest skins from Lophorina came from anywhere else but the Vogelkop. All the new Birds of Paradise that became known in eighteenth-century Europe were collected there. The Central Cordillera populations of Lophorina were only described in the early nineteen hundreds except for the far eastern birds.
 
I'm getting more and more puzzled by this. They re-identified nominate superba from those, may I say not very accurate, illustrations ? It's not plausible at all that the earliest skins from Lophorina came from anywhere else but the Vogelkop. All the new Birds of Paradise that became known in eighteenth-century Europe were collected there. The Central Cordillera populations of Lophorina were only described in the early nineteen hundreds except for the far eastern birds.
OK, I'm just passing what is in the paper, so please don't shoot the messenger ;).
They say illustrations published later by Audebert & Vieillot ([here]) and by Levaillant ([here] and [here]) are clearly of the Vogelkop form, but do not represent the original Sonnerat bird. For the latter, they say that, although the same origin has usually assumed, the actual origin is not known. They add:
The figures and descriptions of Sonnerat’s type, however, match males of the central cordillera–Papuan Peninsula populations instead. Not only are the longest (mid-outer) cape plumes rather straight and distinctly shorter than the square-tipped tail in repose (Sonnerat, 1776: pl. 96), but the tips of the plumes are also squared-off, tending to spathulate (Daubenton, 1765–1781: pl. 632). There are discrepancies however. Although technical delineation is poor, the central breast shield feather scales show no sign of black centre spots. Thus, notwithstanding that cape and tail traits overtly identify Daubenton’s plate 632 with central cordillera–Papuan Peninsula forms, this minor discrepancy and the possibility that longer, out-curving and narrowly rounded outer cape feathers could have been in moult at the time introduce elements of doubt and grounds for dispute.
I don't know these birds well enough to comment on the characters. (The reference to the length of cape plumes relative to the tail in the above is puzzling, though, as, in Table 2, they compare the length of cape plumes to wing tips. I suspect this is what was intended here as well.)
But I would agree that, indeed, it may not be extremely wise to rely on apparent shape and structure (be it of the bird, or of some of its feathers) on this type of plate.
 
Don't worry, I'm unarmed. The fact that both Sonnerat and Daubenton show a bird without black centres in the feathers of the breast shield is no minor discrepancy. It proves that the model originated from the Vogelkop mountains just as the ones illustrated by Audebert and Barraband. Only the Vogelkop and Birdneck (niedda) males lack the black centres. Every other male from left to right across the central mountains have them. All that talk about cape feathers is beyond me.
 
OK. That may make this an interesting test case, then: what happens when some disagree very strongly with a published neotype designation?

(If [you are convinced that] the original type locality is the Vogelkop, and the authors deliberately designated a neotype from the Kobowre Mountains, it seems obvious that [for you] they failed to provide "evidence that the neotype came as nearly as practicable from the original type locality", which is a sine qua non condition to have a valid neotype designation (see [Art.75.3.6]). Note that the Code calls for evidence here, not "just" for the author's reasons to believe that it was the case--compare with the wording of 75.3.4. Thus [for you at least], the requirement of 75.3.6 is arguably not met, which means that the designation is invalid, the designated neotype is not a neotype, and the type locality is still the locality of collection of the original holotype.)
 
Wow, I definitely need to get hold of this paper, Hidde makes a very good point that all those early skins came from the Vogelkop and the lack of black spots is pretty good support for that. Interesting to see the problematic taxon sphinx synonymised with minor too, hardly surprsing there.
 
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