Phylogeny and Biogeography of the Core Babblers (Aves: Timaliidae)

Abstract

The avian family Timaliidae is a species rich and morphologically diverse component of African and Asian tropical forests. The morphological diversity within the family has attracted interest from ecologists and evolutionary biologists, but systematists have long suspected that this diversity might also mislead taxonomy, and recent molecular phylogenetic work has supported this hypothesis. We produced and analyzed a data set of 6 genes and almost 300 individuals to assess the evolutionary history of the family. Although phylogenetic analysis required extensive adjustment of program settings, we ultimately produced a well-resolved phylogeny for the family. The resulting phylogeny provided strong support for major subclades within the family but extensive paraphyly of genera. Only 3 genera represented by more than 3 species were monophyletic. Biogeographic reconstruction indicated a mainland Asian origin for the family and most major clades. Colonization of Africa, Sundaland, and the Philippines occurred relatively late in the family's history and was mostly unidirectional. Several putative babbler genera, such as Robsonius, Malia, Leonardina, and Micromacronus are only distantly related to the Timaliidae.

Complete mitochondrial genome of Minla ignotincta (Passeriformes: Timaliidae)

“…A separate M. ignotincta was the sister lineage to the clade formed by the species of genus Leiothrix with more than 96% of posterior probability, which was consistent with BI analysis results of Gelang et al (2009) and Moyle et al (2012). Therefore, we hold that the genomic data of M. ignotincta was trustworthy.…”

Characterization of the complete mitochondrial genome and phylogenetic relationship of Pomatorhinus ruficollis (Passeriformes, Timaliinae)

“…Figure 1 shows that Pomatorhinus genus gathered to one clade, Xiphirhynchus superciliaris and Pomatorhinus ferruginosus are clustered as a sister lineage. Pomatorhinus is not monophyly, which is consistent with other studies (Cibois 2003;Collar 2004;Reddy & Moyle 2010;Moyle et al 2012). …”

Genetic confirmation of the species status of Jabouilleia naungmungensis

“…This difference in taxonomic treatment was subsequently debated in the literature and in online forums (Alström et al 2013;Collar 2011;Collar and Pilgrim 2007;Eames and Mahood 2011;Moyle et al 2012;Nyári and Reddy 2013;Oliveros et al 2012;Rappole et al 2005Rappole et al , 2008Reddy 2008;Reddy and Moyle 2011;Renner et al 2015). At present, taxonomic authorities appear to be following the arguments presented by Collar (2011) in treating J. naungmungensis as a subspecies of J. danjoui (Dickinson and Christidis 2014) or Napothera danjoui (Clements et al 2015) (for differences between the two generic classifications, refer to Fig.…”

“…To perform comparisons with available sequences of Jabouilleia danjoui and related babblers (data set for comparison from Moyle et al 2012), we extracted DNA from one tissue sample of a J. naungmungensis specimen (sample number 3318, specimen currently at BOKU; Table 1), which was also included in all morphological analyses.…”