Meliphagoidea
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Acanthizidae |
Meliphagoidea is a superfamily of passerine birds. They contain a vast diversity of small to mid-sized songbirds widespread in the Austropacific region. Sahul has the largest richness in genera and species.
[edit] Systematics
This group was proposed based on the phenetic DNA-DNA hybridization studies of Charles Sibley et al.. While many of the birds therein had long been recognized as related in some way after the "wastebin" concept of a massively paraphyletic "warbler and flycatcher" family was abandoned in the latter 20th century, no final proposal as to their relationships had been made[verification needed].
However, all of these early studies must be considered lacking by today's standards of phylogenetic research. The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, while correctly predicting many of the Passerida subdivisions, gave an entirely flawed picture of the more basal songbirds, which they erroneously believed to constitute another monophyletic group. (They called it "Corvida".)
The first modern proposal of a monophyletic Meliphagoidea based on cladistic analysis was made by ornithologists at the American Museum of Natural History. Things have since turned out to be quite a bit different from what was claimed based on the earlier assumptions, regardless of whether these were based on morphological or molecular data.[1]
[edit] Families
- Family Maluridae: fairy-wrens, emu-wrens and grasswrens
- Family Dasyornithidae: bristlebirds. Formerly in Acanthizidae.
- Family Acanthizidae: scrubwrens, thornbills and gerygones
- Family Meliphagidae: honeyeaters
Their molecular and morphological plesiomorphy has long misled researchers about the pardalotes' affiliations.
The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy controversially placed the Acanthizidae and Dasyornithidae in the Pardalotidae (pardalotes) as subfamilies. This has turned out to be false; the Pardalotidae are actually so close to the honeyeaters that they might arguably be included therein, while the Acanthizidae and Dasyornithidae are rather distinct. The spinebills, Acanthorhynchus, are traditionally considered aberrant honeyeaters; however, they seem to be very ancient members of that group and if the pardalotes are maintained as a distinct family, the spinebills might conceivably be split off too. Given that this would mean creating two monotypic families with a mere 6 species altogether, keeping the spinebills within the Meliphagidae and possibly merging the pardalotes therein too seems the most sensible course of action.[2]
The Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy also placed the Petroicidae (Australasian "robins") in the Meliphagoidea. This is now known to be in error; rather, they seem to form a distinct lineage of uncertain relationships; all that can be said at present with reasonable certainty is that they are neither Passerida ("advanced" songbirds) nor a very ancient songbird group.[2]
For all the DNA data analyzed in the many years of research by Sibley et al., their results were not markedly better in resolving the relationships of the Petroicidae than the preceding qualitative morphological studies. The latter were actually closer to the truth in generally assuming that the pardalotes were closer to the honeyeaters than to the scrubwrens and bristlebirds. Still, it took until the 21st century to determine the relationships of any of these groups with some degree of accuracy.
[edit] Footnotes
[edit] References
- Barker, F. Keith; Barrowclough, George F. & Groth, Jeff G. (2002): A phylogenetic hypothesis for passerine birds: taxonomic and biogeographic implications of an analysis of nuclear DNA sequence data. Proc. R. Soc. B 269(1488): 295-308. doi:10.1098/rspb.2001.1883 PDF fulltext
- Barker, F. Keith; Cibois, Alice; Schikler, Peter A.; Feinstein, Julie & Cracraft, Joel (2004): Phylogeny and diversification of the largest avian radiation. PNAS 101(30): 11040-11045. doi:10.1073/pnas.0401892101 PDF fulltext Supporting information
- Jønsson, Knud A. & Fjeldså, Jon (2006): A phylogenetic supertree of oscine passerine birds (Aves: Passeri). Zool. Scripta 35(2): 149–186. doi:10.1111/j.1463-6409.2006.00221.x (HTML abstract)
[edit] External links
- Meliphagoidea - Highlighting relationships of Maluridae on Tree Of Life Web Project
