Myrmeciza antbirds (1 Viewer)

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

IOC Updates Diary Dec 31

Move five species of antbird to Percnostola from Akletos and Hafferia.

Big mistake of the beginning of this year. Akletos is sister to Gymnocichla nudiceps (Harvey and al., 2020). I think it's a big bulls**t to strictly follow the recommendations of the sacc. Be your own taxonomic philosophy

 

[l_raty]

Topology in Isler et al 2013 : (Gymnocichla, [Pyriglena, (Percnostola, [Akletos, Hafferia])])
Topology in Harvey et al 2020 : (Pyriglena, [(Gymnocichla, Akletos), (Percnostola, Hafferia)])

The monophyly of the five subgroups is strongly supported in both studies; but all the internal nodes uniting some of the subgroups in Isler et al apparently had BS < 70 (grey / white circles on the node in the tree shown in the proposal; in the copies of the published ML tree I have seen, all the circles that are not white in this figure looked black, however); in Harvey et al these internal nodes all have BS = 100. None of these internal nodes is present in both topologies.

(If the grey circles in the ML tree shown in the proposal are correct, I'm a bit surprised by the apparent complete consensus on the notion that attaching a name to a node with 50 < BS < 70 offers a good guarantee of "long-term monophyly and stability" for the named taxon. In my experience, this is not the case at all.)

The genus-group names involved are -

Pyriglena Cabanis 1847 https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/7251692
Gymnocichla Sclater 1858 https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3227104
Percnostola Cabanis & Heine 1860 https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/49587863
Akletos Dunajewski 1948 https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/40587907
Hafferia Isler, Bravo & Brumfield 2013 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260762820

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

This is why the tendancy of "all-lumping" is a stupid decision because despite the monophyly of each clade, their position varies from study to study. So it is, in my opinion, imperative to keep these genera independent despite their close relationship.

 

[Peter Kovalik]

Proposal (884) to SACC

Expand Percnostola to include Hafferia and Akletos

DID NOT PASS

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

DID NOT PASS

Fortunately