Paracorvids

Passerines

Tyranni: Suboscines

Passeri: Oscines

Passerida

Sylvioidea
Muscicapoidea and allies
Passeroidea

The 44 Orders

Paleognaths

Galloanserae

Metaves

Pelecanae

Charadriae

Passerae

Paracorvids

Unlike the passerines and suboscines, the corvid assemblage has not been readily identifiable and taxa are still being moved between the corvid groups and the Passerida. Sibley, Ahlquist, and Monroe took the first step of gathering the corvids together (albeit imperfectly). This is reflected in Gill's family list (1995) and the 3rd edition Howard-Moore checklist, which did a lot to group them in reasonable families. Checklists of a more traditional sort, such as Clements 5th edition list place the corvid assemblage all over the map.

Sibley and Ahlquist's view was that the remaining passerines split cleanly into a corvid group (Corvida) and a group containing everything else (Passerida). Further study has shown that reality is more complex. Unlike the Passerida, their version of the corvids was not a monophyletic group. Nonetheless, there seems to be a core group of corvids that is sister to the Passerida. In between are several groups that we might call paracorvids (Menurida, Climacterida, Meliphagida, Pomatostomida, possibly Orthonychida). They branch off separately before the split between the Corvida proper and Passerida (see Ericson et al., 2002a; Barker et al., 2004; Irestedt and Ohlson, 2008).

It is striking how the initial corvid radiation was confined to Australasia. We see this in the distribution of the paracorvid groups. All of the Menurida, Climacterida, and Pomatostomida are Australasian. Only Meliphagida has any species outside the area. Even there, three of the five families (Maluridae, Dasyornithidae, and Pardalotidae) are also entirely Australasian. Only one of Acanthizidae crosses Wallace's line—the Golden-bellied Gerygone. That leaves the Meliphagidae, which have spread widely across Australasia and Oceania, with several species coming near Wallace's line. Even so, only one of them, the Indonesian Honeyeater, manages to ranges even barely into Indo-Malaya.

Menurida

The first paracorvid branch, Menurida, is endemic to Australia. It consists of the lyrebirds (Menuridae) and scrub-birds (Atrichornithidae). Ericson et al. (2002b) found the Menurida sister to the rest of the oscines, but did not include scrub-birds in his analysis. Morphological analyses had placed the scrub-birds next to the lyrebirds. A genetic analysis was recently carried out by Chesser and ten Have (2007). It concurs that the lyrebirds and scrub-birds are sister families, and also concurs with basic tree we present here. For a discussion of the history of lyrebird and scrub-bird taxonomy, see the Ericson et al. and Chesser and ten Have papers, respectively.

Menuridae: Lyrebirds

1 genus, 2 species HBW-9

Atrichornithidae: Scrub-birds

1 genus, 2 species HBW-9

Climacterida

Climacterida The Climacterida are the next branch. There are two families here: Australasian treecreepers (Climacteridae) and bowerbirds (Ptilonorhynchidae). These families are endemic to Australasia. Although the extant species occur only in Australia and New Guinea, genetic evidence has shown that the apparently extinct Piopio of New Zealand is actually a basal member of the bowerbirds. It had sometimes been classified with the Pachycephalidae and there had been questions about whether it related to the birds-of-paradise (Christidis et al., 1996).

The overall taxonomy is based on Ericson et al. (2002b) for Climactrida, and Christidis et al. (1996) and Kusmierski et al. (1997) for the bowerbirds.

Climacteridae: Australasian Treecreepers

2 genera, 7 species HBW-12

Ptilonorhynchidae: Bowerbirds

7 genera, 22 species HBW-14

Based on Zwiers et al. (2008), Sericulus ardens, has been split from Sericulus aureus. Interestingly, they are not each other's closest relatives. The name Flame Bowerbird follows S. ardens while S. aureus becomes Masked Bowerbird.

Meliphagida

There are five families in the Meliphagida: Australasian wrens (Maluridae), bristlebirds (Dasyornithidae), pardalotes (Pardalotidae), thornbills and gerygones (Acanthizidae), and honeyeaters (Meliphagidae). We follow the order in Gardner et al. (2010). The Acanthizidae, Dasyornithidae, and Pardalotidae have sometimes been placed in the same family under the name Pardalotidae. The Dasyornithidae are a separate branch of the Meliphagida, but it would be possible to merge Acanthizidae and Pardalotidae. They've recently been treated as separate families, and for the present I continue that arrangement.

Maluridae: Australian Wrens

5 genera, 28 species HBW-12

The Maluridae are another family that is restricted to Australia and New Guinea. The arrangement here is based on the discussion in Christidis and Boles (2008).

Maluridae

Dasyornithidae: Bristlebirds

1 genus, 3 species HBW-12

The bristlebirds are endemic to Australia.

Pardalotidae: Pardalotes

1 genus, 4 species HBW-13

The Paradalotes are endemic to Australia.

Acanthizidae: Thornbills, Gerygones

15 genera, 65 species HBW-12

Climacterida Although the Acanthizidae are primarily Australasian, with ranges east and south of Wallace's line, there is one exception—the Golden-bellied Gerygone. It ranges north to the Philippines and west to Malaysia and Sumatra.

The genus-level phylogenetic tree is mostly from Gardner et al. (2010), with a little help from Norman et al. (2009b). Nicholls et al. (2000) present a phylogeny of the thornbills which the arrangement here is based on. I gather that further details are in Nicholls (2001), which I have not seen. The scrubwrens follow the protein electrophoresis results of Christidis et al. (1988).

Christidis and Boles (2008) was also consulted during the process. I've decided to use their generic limits, putting the heathwrens in Hylacola and the Speckled Warbler in Chthonicola.

Recent work by Norman et al. has led to some adjustment of the boundaries of Acanthizidae. Norman et al. (2009a) showed that the mohouas are not part of Acanthizidae, but rather belong in Corvoidea. In a second paper, Norman et al. (2009b) showed that the Goldenface, Pachycare flavogriseum, does belong in Acanthizidae, not Pachycephalidae, Petroicidae, or anyplace else that had previously been suggested.

Meliphagidae: Honeyeaters

44 genera, 182 species HBW-13

Meliphagidae Although they have spread widely. The Meliphagidae are primarily Australasian. Some of them have colonized various islands in Oceania, and several have spread into Wallacea, including the Lesser Sundas, Moluccas, and Sulawesi, but only one occurs outside Australasia and Oceania. That is the Indonesian Honeyeater. It barely crosses Wallace's line into Bali, which is considered part of Indo-Malaya (aka the Oriental Region).

The honeyeaters were substantially restructured by Sibley and Ahlquist (1990), losing the genera Cleptornis (Passerida), Oedistoma and Toxorhamphus (Melanocharitidae), and Promerops (Promeropidae), but gaining Epthianura and Ashbyia from the defunct Epthianuridae. Driskell and Christidis (2004) concur that Epthianura and Ashbyia are honeyeaters. It was later found that the Bonin Honeyeater, Apalopteron familiare belongs in the Passerida (more precisely, Zosteropidae; Springer et al., 1995). More recently, Cracraft and Feinstein (2000) found that MacGregor's Bird-of-paradise, Macgregoria pulchra, is actually a honeyeater, while Ewen et al. (2006) and Driskell et al. (2007) found that the Stitchbird, Notiomystis cincta belongs near the Callaeidae, where it becomes a monotypic family. The now-extinct Hawaiian honeyeaters (genera Moho and Chaetoptila) were formerly considered to be part of this family, but they have recently been found to be related to waxwings (Fleischer et al., 2008).

Between Driskell and Christidis (2004), Cracraft and Feinstein (2000), Norman et al. (2007), and HBW-13 (del Hoyo et al., 2008), there is enough information for a reasonable genus-level or even species-level taxonomy. The overall structure of the family follows Driskell and Christidis (2004). In the true Meliphagidae, Driskell and Christidis found that the spinebills were basal, with everything else divided into four major clades. They also found weaker evidence that the four clades group into two pairs: here ranked as subfamilies and called Meliphaginae and Philemoninae.

The Meliphaginae include two tribes: Epthianurini and Meliphagini. Cracraft and Feinstein include representatives of each tribe. They found Macgregoria to be closest to Melipotes, which is in Epthianurini. It seems reasonable to make this former bird-of-paradise the basal member of Epthianurini. The former family Epthianurinae is also included, as well as some more traditional honeyeater genera, as can been seen in the Meliphaginae tree. Genera whose position is based on evidence other than DNA are marked with an asterisk.

Philemoninae also consists of two tribes: Myzomelini and Philemonini, as shown in the third tree.

Some of the genera may be unfamiliar. Both Sugomel niger and Cissomela pectoralis are often placed in Certhionyx. Here, they fall in three different tribes. Also, Purnella albifrons and Gliciphila melanops, now in separate subfamilies, are sometimes considered part of Phylidonyris. Phylidonyris has also lost the two Glycifohia, which are more closely related to Trichodere.

Acanthorhynchinae

Meliphaginae

Meliphaginae

Epthianurini

Meliphagini

Philemoninae

Philemoninae

Myzomelini

Philemonini

Pomatostomida

The last two paracorvid families are the logrunners (Orthonychidae) and Australasian babblers (Pomatostomidae), which together form the Pomatostomida. Both have an Australasian distribution. They are placed together on a branch as in Barker et al. (2002) and Irestedt and Ohlson (2008). However, Barker et al. (2004) considered each a separate deep paracorvid branch (which would be Pomatostomida and Orthonychida), while Ericson et al. (2002b) has them grouped with the Meliphagida. In any event, they split off before the division between the Corvida and Passerida, which means they are in the paracorvids.

Orthonychidae: Logrunners

1 genus, 3 species HBW-12

Pomatostomidae: Australasian Babblers

2 genera, 5 species HBW-12

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