Peltops Wagler 1829

Peltops

The distinctively black, red and white species of New Guinean Peltops have been placed variously with Old World muscicapid flycatchers (Muscicapidae), Australasian monarchs (Monarchidae) or Australasian robins (Petroicidae) (Mayr 1941; Rand & Gilliard 1967; Wolters 1980b). Mayr (1986) treated the genus as incertae sedis. DNA-DNA hybridization (Sibley & Ahlquist 1984, 1985, 1990), nevertheless, grouped Peltops among the Australo-Papuan butcherbirds and woodswallows (Artamidae), a position widely accepted since (Beehler & Finch 1985; Sibley & Monroe 1990; Schodde & Mason 1999; Dickinson 2003; Russell & Rowley 2009). Its species are sallying insectivores with flycatcher habits, but both structural morphology and the consensus of multi-locus DNA sequencing (Norman et al. 2009b; Jønsson et al. 2010, 2011; Kearns et al. 2013; Aggerbeck et al. 2014) corroborate placement in the artamid complex. Like butcherbirds and woodswallows, they have spiny, doubled zygomatic processes, a heavily ossified nasal cavity and a narrow bony palate: nares are amphirhinal, the anterior palate pseudo-desmognathous and the palatine shelf constricted with elongated trans-palatine processes (Schodde & Mason 1999: 533). Monarchs also have well-ossified nasal cavities, but the palate does not reach the pseudodesmognathous condition, and zygomatic processes are single.

Less clear is the position of Peltops within the artamid complex. The multi-locus phylogenies of Norman et al. (2009b), Jønsson et al. (2010) and Jønsson et al. (2011), each based on a wide range of corvoid genera, all recovered woodswallows, butcherbirds and Peltops as three equidistant lineages in one monophyletic cluster. Divergence within the cluster is deep, dating to the late Oligocene according to Jønsson et al. (2011). Aggerbeck et al. ’s (2014) review of the corvoid radiation using markers from 22 genes corroborated the monophyly of the cluster, but found Peltops to be sister to a woodswallow-butcherbird lineage, with comprehensive support. Kearns et al. ’s (2013) more focused phylogeny of the artamid cluster instead found Peltops sister to the butcherbirds alone, and recovered the cluster as paraphyletic with respect to the Asian ioras (Aegithinidae) and African bush-shrikes, wattle-eyes, batises and vangas (Malaconotidae, Platysteiridae, Vangidae). Support for paraphyly and a sister relationship between the woodswallows (Artamus) and Asian ioras (Aegithinidae) was nevertheless weak and at variance with the more broadly based and better supported phylogeny of Aggerbeck et al. (l.c.). Irrespective of the relationships of Artamus, it is clear from all molecular phylogenies that Peltops is a deeply diverged lineage in the complex. That and the consensus of morphological, zoogeographic and DNA sequence data lead us to treat Peltops as one of three subfamilies in one family for which the senior name is Artamidae Vigors, 1825. The two other subfamilies are Artaminae and Cracticinae Chenu & des Murs 1853 (1836), the bracketed date indicating priority according to Article 40.2.1 and recommendation 40A of the Code. Because Peltops has not been assigned formal family-group status, we do so here, noting that its depth of divergence and position may be found to qualify it for family ranking in the future.