Re: Metaves and Coronaves

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Christopher Taylor" <ck.taylor@auckland.ac.nz>
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 1:25 AM

>    As shown in Mickey's tree [...]
> relationships within the clades are mostly unresolved. It's good to see 
> that
> those few that are supported are mostly pretty uncontroversial. The only
> exceptions I can spot are the inclusion of Turnicidae among the
> Charadriiformes, the failure to resolve Glareolidae as monophyletic
> (coursers appear in the tree twice), and the association of Bucerotidae 
> and
> Trogonidae (not controversial except in the sense that trogons have never
> really been accepted as sitting _anywhere_). Does anyone know if a list is
> available anywhere of the exact species used?

Yes, in the supplementary information, the DOI URL of which is given in the 
article. It leads to 
http://evol.allenpress.com/archive/0014-3820/058/11/supinfo/10.1554_04-235.1.s1.doc 
which contains the entire alignments. But nowhere is there any indication of 
_which_ members of Glareolidae and which members of Charadriidae (found to 
be paraphyletic) have ended up where! :-(

>    The association of the 'Metaves' taxa (which include also include
> Phaethontidae - Mickey seems to have accidentally left them out) is
> definitely weird, but perhaps not so unacceptable as it might appear. As 
> the
> authors point out, the problem isn't really that relationships between 
> these
> taxa have been rejected in the past, they've mostly just never been
> considered. Apodiformes and Caprimulgiformes have generally been 
> considered
> as related, and they're both Metaves, as have Columbidae and Pteroclidae.
> Those relationships which _have_ been broken up - _Opisthocomus_ and
> Cuculidae, Phoenicopteridae and "Ciconiiformes", the "Gruiformes", and
> Caprimulgiformes and Strigiformes, were arguably not that well-established
> in the first place.

IMHO it's interesting that the hoatzin and the seriemas have been considered 
close relatives. In the new tree, the hoatzin sits at the base of Metaves, 
while the seriemas are at the base of a low-bootstrap clade that also 
includes bustards, "higher waterbirds", cuckoos and turacos.
       What was so bad about "Caprimulgiformes" + Strigiformes?
       (And isn't Pteroclididae the spelling?)

> The only significant omission I can see is _Leptosomus_, the cuckoo 
> roller,

Oh yes! It does, however, illustrate another of Fain & Houde's points: that 
many bird clades which today look like relicts from (Outer) Gondwana had a 
pantropical distribution in the Paleogene. The only known leptosomid besides 
*L.* itself, which is endemic to Madagascar, comes from Messel (Mayr & 
whoever, less than 2 years ago IIRC).