Corvida II

Passerines

Tyranni: Suboscines

Passeri: Oscines

Passerida

Sylvioidea
Muscicapoidea and allies
Passeroidea

The 44 Orders

Paleognaths

Galloanserae

Metaves

Pelecanae

Charadriae

Passerae

Corvoidae

If you're paying attention to the names of the higher-level groups, this one may leave you scratching your head. What's Corvoidae? Is it a typo for Corvoidea?

It is not a typo, but is the ending for an epifamily, a rarely used group between family and superfamily. I've resorted to it here to emphasize that the following families are more closely related to each other than to anything else. This is the inner core of the corvids.

The last group includes the drongos and fantails, probably basally. Beyond that, the family order becomes unclear. The the shrikes, mudnesters, and birds-of-paradise may be slightly closer to each other than to the rest.

The corvid group ends with the monarchs (Monarchidae) and jays and crows (Corvidae). There are also a couple of interesting small changes in the Corvidae. We already discussed the Crested Jay. The other ringer is Hume's Groundpecker (or Ground Jay), Pseudopodoces humilis. It was thought to be a corvid, the smallest of them. It is so listed even in Howard and Moore, but recent evidence (James et al., 2003; Gill et al., 2005) suggests it is actually a parid!

Dicruridae: Drongos

1 genus, 25 species HBW-14

The ordering of the drongos is based on Pasquet et al. (2007).

Rhipiduridae: Fantails

3 genera, 46 species HBW-11

Click for Rhipiduridae tree
Click for Rhipiduridae tree

Irestedt et al. (2008) found that the Silktail is not a monarch (or anything else it had been considered in the past). It is really a basal member of the fantails, most closely related to the Pygmy Drongo (which is not a Drongo).

The Yellow-bellied Fantail, formerly Rhipidura hypoxantha, has been moved as it is not a fantail (Nyári et al., 2009). It now takes the scientific name Chelidorhynx hypoxantha and is one of the Stenostiridae. The overall arrangement of the fantails is based on the Bayesian analysis in Nyári et al. (2009).

Corcoracidae: Australian Mudnesters

2 genera, 2 species HBW-14, as Struthideidae

Laniidae: Shrikes

5 genera, 37 species HBW-13

Laniidae tree The shrikes are augmented by the Crested Jay, Platylophus galericulatus. It's definitely not a jay. Clench (1985) suggested it might be a starling, but it seems to be a shrike (Jønsson et al., 2008b).

The gray shrikes have been the subject of several genetic studies, including those of Mundy and Helbig (2004), Gonzalez et al. (2008), Klassert et al. (2008), and Olsson et al. (2010). Although Olsson et al.'s analysis is the most comprehensive, it still leaves a fair amount of uncertainty.

Mundy and Helbig (2004), analyzing DNA from several gray shrike taxa, found that the North American form invictus, conventionally considered part of excubitor, actually seemed to be more closely related to ludovicianus. Both Gonzalez et al. (2008) and Klassert et al. (2008) provided support for this, and added the subspecies meridionalis to the invictus-ludovicianus clade. This rendered the specis meridionalis polyphyletic. Olsson et al. (2010) analyzed many more of the gray shrike subspecies. Two of the fiscals, the Somali Fiscal and Taita Fiscal, seem to belong to the gray shrike group. The Taita Fiscal is most distant from the others, which divide into two clades as shown in the table below.

Exactly how to divide these groups into species is less than clear, and Olsson et al. suggest several possibilities. The one I've taken divides the first clade into 3 species, the monotypic Socotra Shrike, Lanius uncinatus (split from L. meridionalis); the Desert Shrike, Lanius elegans (also split from L. meridionalis); and the Great Gray Shrike, Lanius excubitor. The latter has gained the remainder of meridionalis (except meridionalis itself). I have also merged the Steppe Gray Shrike back into excubitor. The DNA differences between the various subspecies of Desert and Great Gray Shrike are large enough that they could represent more species, but small enough that all of them could be lumped into Great Gray Shrike. There is limited other evidence available. There are plumage differences, but one of the Desert Shrike subspecies is thought to interbreed some with one of the Great Gray Shrike subspecies.

The other clade includes six species. The Chinese Gray Shrike has been split into two monotypic species: Chinese Gray Shrike, Lanius sphenocercus, and Tibetan Shrike, Lanius giganteus. The two not only differ in plumage, but the DNA differences are consistent with species status. The Northern Shrike, Lanius borealis, includes not only North American subspecies, but also the eastern Palearctic subspecies of the former Northern/Great Gray complex. Finally, the Southern Gray Shrike, which is closely related to the Northern Shrike, retains only one subspecies, meridionalis.

Note that I have not otherwise updated the ordering within Lanius.

The Gray Shrikes
Species Subspecies
Taita Fiscal, L. dorsalis *dorsalis
Socotra Shrike, L. uncinatus *uncinatus
Desert Shrike, L. elegans *koenigi, *algeriensis, *elegans, *leucopygos
Great Gray Shrike, L. excubitor *excubitor, *homeyeri (inc. *leucopterus), *aucheri, theresae, *buryi, jebelmarrae, *pallidirostris, *lathora
Somali Fiscal, L. somalicus *somalicus
Loggerhead Shrike, L. ludovicianus *excubitorides (inc. gambeli & sonoriensis), migrans, ludovicianus, miamensis, anthonyi, mearnsi, grinnelli, *mexicanus (inc. nelsoni)
Chinese Gray Shrike, L. sphenocercus *sphenocercus
Tibetan Shrike, L. giganteus *giganteus
Northern Shrike, L. borealis *borealis (inc. invictus), *sibiricus, *bianchii, *mollis, *funereus
Southern Gray Shrike, L. meridionalis *meridionalis
Subspecies based on Dickinson et al. (2003).
*An asterisk indicates taxa sampled by Olsson et al. (2010).

Paradisaeidae: Manucodes, Birds-of-Paradise

16 genera, 41 species HBW-14

Paradisaeidae tree The phylogeny here follows Irestedt et al. (2009a). Note that two species formerly placed in Ptiloris have been moved to Lophorina.

Monarchidae: Monarchs

17 genera, 100 species HBW-11

As mentioned earlier, both Ifrita and Melampitta likely belong with the monarchs. Norman et al. (2009a) found Ifrita sister to a clade containing Monarcha and Myiagra. This suggests it either belongs with the paradise-flycatchers, or in a basal position. Similar considerations apply to Melampitta, so I've put them first, but with a lot of uncertainty about where they actually go.

Monarchidae The genetics of the Monarchidae have been studied by Pasquet et al. (2002), Filardi and Moyle (2005), and Filardi and Smith (2005). It is clear that the traditional Monarcha itself is paraphyletic. Christidis and Boles (2008) discuss appropriate generic names. They have been applied here, breaking Monarcha into three genera: Carterornis, Monarcha, and Symposiachrus. Note that Metabolus has been absorbed into into the narrower Monarcha based on Filardi and Moyle (2005.

Since the papers above did not test all of the species in Monarcha, information from the species accounts in HBW-11 (del Hoyo et al., 2006) and family account (Coates et al., 2006) have been used to divide its species among the three genera. I'm a bit more uncertain about pileatus than the rest, so it is flagged in the list below.

As none of the papers took a comprehensive look at Monarchidae, the HBW-11 family account (Coates et al., 2006) was helpful preparing the tree. Ifrita and Melampitta are tentatively put first. Then there is a division between the Paradise-Flycatchers (plus Hypothymis) and the other monarchs. The position of Eutrichomyias is somewhat uncertain. Is it closer to Trochocercus or Terpsiphone?

The Monarcha branch splits into three main groups: Arses and Myiagra; Grallina; and Monarcha and allies. The taxonomic position of Grallina has been controversial, but Filardi and Moyle (2005) have resolved its position as sister to the Monarcha group.

Cibois et al. (2004) addressed the species status of the Pomarea Monarchs of the central Pacific. VanderWerf (2007) showed that the forms of Elepaio on different islands were relatively unresponsive to each other's songs, while VanderWerf et al. (2010) shows they are as genetically distinct as the species in the closely related genus Pomarea. The combination of reasonable genetic distance and evidence of biological separation results in a split of the Elepaio, Chasiempis sandwichensis, into 3 species: Kauai Elepaio, Chasiempis sclateri, Oahu Elepaio, Chasiempis ibidis, and Hawaii Elepaio, Chasiempis sandwichensis.

Corvidae: Crows, Jays

23 genera, 127 species HBW-14

Corvidae tree The corvid genera are arranged based on Ericson et al. (2005) and, for the New World jays, Bonaccorso and Peterson (2007). I'm treating the natural division into 5 clades as subfamilies. A bit different arrangement is used by Ekman and Ericson (2006), but it includes fewer taxa. There is some ambiguity about the position of Perisoreinae, Cyanocoracinae, and Corvinae, so I have left that unresolved in the tree. This ambiguity doesn't seem to affect the ordering of species.

I've split the Western Scrub-Jay into Woodhouse's Scrub-Jay, Aphelocoma woodhouseii, and California Scrub-Jay, Aphelocoma californica, based on Rice et al. (2003) and Delaney et al. (2008). The AOU's NACC is now considering this split (and a bit more). I've also split the Mexican Jay into Transvolcanic Jay, Aphelocoma ultramarina, and Mexican Jay, Aphelocoma wollweberi, as in McCormack et al. (2008). It seems likely from their results that A. wollweberi will need at least one further split.

Bonaccorso (2009) was the primary source concerning the arrangment of Cyanolyca. The Cyanocorax/Psilorhinus clade is based on Bonaccorso et al. (2010). However, rather than put all of them into Cyanocorax, I felt it best to distinguish the two main clades, thus the use of Psilorhinus. I would have liked to maintain Calocitta for the distinctive magpie-jays, restrict Psilorhinus to the Brown Jay, and use Uroleuca for the other Psilorhinus, but the results of Bonaccorso et al. were equivocal about whether that is legitimate.

Since Bonaccorso et al. found substantial genetic distance between South American and Middle American green jays, I think the balance of evidence favors splitting the Middle American races as Green Jay, Cyanocorax luxuosus, and the South American races as Inca Jay, Cyanocorax yncas, even though the AOU has not done so at this time.

The genus Corvus remains confusing as no broad sampling has been done. What has been done shows that the Chihuahuan Raven, Corvus cryptoleucus, and possibly the Pied Crow, Corvus albus, are embedded in the Common Raven complex. Moreover, the Chihuahuan Raven seems more closely related to a mostly Californian clade of Common Ravens than either is to the other Common Ravens. See Feldman and Omland (2004) and Omland et al. (2000, 2006).

The Crested Jay, Platylophus galericulatus, has been moved to the shrike family (see Jønsson et al., 2008b).

Pyrrhocoracinae: Choughs and Treepies

Cissinae: Green and Blue Magpies

Perisoreinae: Northern Jays

Cyanocoracinae: American Jays

Corvinae: Crows and Palearctic Jays

Previous Page Next Page