Daniel Philippe
Well-known member
Redrawing the phylogeny and taxonomy of Calandrella Larks: one new localized West African taxon and several surprising relationships
M. Stervander, U. Olsson, P. Alström, U. Ottosson, B. Hansson, and S. Bensch
Larks are known as a morphologically diverse family which has long challenged taxonomists. Recently, a multilocus phylogeny of all genera, and >80 % of the species, revealed several surprising relationship warranting a major taxonomical revision. We studied the genus Calandrella (excluding the paraphyletic Alaudala clade sensu Alström et al. 2013), covering all species and subspecies currently recognized by IOC. Sampling wild birds we sequenced a large portion of, or the entire, mitochondrial cytb gene. This was supplemented by sequencing a 350 bp region from museum specimens. The results reveal some highlights: (1) A localized population of Red-capped Lark C. cinerea in Nigeria is a unique, non-recognized taxon, which is sister to the subspecies C. c. williamsi in East Africa. This clade differs substantially from all other C. cinerea populations in Southern Africa, which in turn make up a panmictic population. (2) In the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula, C. erlangeri and C. b. blanfordi are recent sister taxa, as are C. b. daaroodensis and C. b. eremica, whereas these two clades represent deeply split sister lineages. (3) The easternmost subspecies dukhunensis of Short-toed Lark C. brachydactyla groups as sister to the Hume’s Short-toed Lark C. acutirostris. Remaining Short-toed Lark populations roughly differentiate into a Western (brachydactyla) and an Eastern (longipennis) clade, albeit with some mixing. For verification, we performed Restriction site Associated DNA (RAD) sequencing on single representatives for all major clades, yielding some 70,000 orthologous loci across the genome. Phylogenetic modelling of single nucleotide polymorphism data from the RAD dataset was performed to compare to the patterns obtained from the single locus mitochondrial analysis. We will evaluate the use of RAD sequencing for phylogenetic inference, and the possibility to use degraded tissue from museum specimens in RAD sequencing.
26th International Ornithological Congress 2014, Tokyo
M. Stervander, U. Olsson, P. Alström, U. Ottosson, B. Hansson, and S. Bensch
Larks are known as a morphologically diverse family which has long challenged taxonomists. Recently, a multilocus phylogeny of all genera, and >80 % of the species, revealed several surprising relationship warranting a major taxonomical revision. We studied the genus Calandrella (excluding the paraphyletic Alaudala clade sensu Alström et al. 2013), covering all species and subspecies currently recognized by IOC. Sampling wild birds we sequenced a large portion of, or the entire, mitochondrial cytb gene. This was supplemented by sequencing a 350 bp region from museum specimens. The results reveal some highlights: (1) A localized population of Red-capped Lark C. cinerea in Nigeria is a unique, non-recognized taxon, which is sister to the subspecies C. c. williamsi in East Africa. This clade differs substantially from all other C. cinerea populations in Southern Africa, which in turn make up a panmictic population. (2) In the Horn of Africa and Arabian Peninsula, C. erlangeri and C. b. blanfordi are recent sister taxa, as are C. b. daaroodensis and C. b. eremica, whereas these two clades represent deeply split sister lineages. (3) The easternmost subspecies dukhunensis of Short-toed Lark C. brachydactyla groups as sister to the Hume’s Short-toed Lark C. acutirostris. Remaining Short-toed Lark populations roughly differentiate into a Western (brachydactyla) and an Eastern (longipennis) clade, albeit with some mixing. For verification, we performed Restriction site Associated DNA (RAD) sequencing on single representatives for all major clades, yielding some 70,000 orthologous loci across the genome. Phylogenetic modelling of single nucleotide polymorphism data from the RAD dataset was performed to compare to the patterns obtained from the single locus mitochondrial analysis. We will evaluate the use of RAD sequencing for phylogenetic inference, and the possibility to use degraded tissue from museum specimens in RAD sequencing.
26th International Ornithological Congress 2014, Tokyo