Return to search

Species Limits and Systematics in Some Passerine Birds

<p>I use morphological, vocal, molecular, behavioural, ecological and distributional data to re-evaluate the systematics of three passerine bird groups, the <i>Mirafraassamica </i>complex (bush-larks), the genus <i>Seicercus</i> ("spectacled-warblers"; with emphasis on the the <i>S. burkii</i> complex) and the genus <i>Motacilla</i> (wagtails). Two new species are described: <i>Seicercus soror</i> and <i>Motacilla samveasnae</i>. I propose that the polytypic species <i>M. assamica</i> should be treated as four separate species: <i>M. assamica</i>, <i>M. affinis</i>, <i>M. microptera</i> and <i>M. marionae</i> (it is also remarked that the proper name of the latter is <i>M. erythrocephala</i>). That is primarily supported by vocalisations and mitochondrial DNA. The latter data set also suggests that <i>M. assamica</i> sensu lato is paraphyletic, since <i>M. erythroptera</i>, which is always treated as a separate species, is nested within the <i>M. assamica</i> complex. I propose that the polytypic species <i>S. burkii</i> comprises six sibling species. Some of these are found to breed sympatrically, although mainly or entirely segregated altitudinally. Mitochondrial DNA suggests that the <i>S. burkii</i> complex is non-monophyletic, and also that the divergence of the different taxa is much older than indicated by morphological and vocal data. According to the molecular phylogeny, both the genera <i>Seicercus</i> and its assumed sister genus <i>Phylloscopus</i> are paraphyletic. That is corroborated by independent data. The phylogenetic study of the genus <i>Motacilla</i> reveals incongruence between mitochondrial DNA, nuclear DNA and non-molecular data. I conclude that the nuclear gene tree reflects the organismal phylogeny more faithfully than the mitochondrial gene tree. The latter is likely to have been affected by introgressive hybridisation, possibly also stochastic lineage sorting. The most remarkable result that is strongly supported by both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA is that <i>M. flava</i> is non-monophyletic.</p>

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:UPSALLA/oai:DiVA.org:uu-2032
Date January 2002
CreatorsAlström, Per
PublisherUppsala University, Department of Systematic Zoology, Uppsala : Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis
Source SetsDiVA Archive at Upsalla University
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeDoctoral thesis, comprehensive summary, text
RelationComprehensive Summaries of Uppsala Dissertations from the Faculty of Science and Technology, 1104-232X ; 726

Page generated in 0.0022 seconds