Honeyeaters and warblers

[Ian Southey]

Procrastinating this morning I found access to this paper http://macroecointern.dk/pdf-reprints/M ... E_2016.pdf looking at the honeyeaters and related families including Tui, bellbird, and warblers.

The honeyeaters are interesting with species looking alike being not especially closely related and vice versa. Tui and Bellbird being a case in point. Relationships of New Zealand species seem similar to earlier results.

The New Zealand warblers are the most recent branch in their genus and the Norfolk and Lord Howe species form a group with them. The next closest relatives come from New Guinea and the northern coast of Australia rather than the closer east coast or New Caledonia.

Ian

[Liam Ballard]

NZ warblers? I thought Grey and Chathams warblers were actually gerygones?

(This comes from someone who hasn't read the page - too many long words )
Thanks

[Ian Southey]

Yes Liam

You're right, they are both in the genus Gerygone and we call them warblers here and I specifically meant those two species in NZ.

Hint about these papers - find the tree diagrams. The branch points are each hypothetical common ancestors to all of the birds that branch off after them. Imagine it like a tree and imagine cutting off a branch with secateurs - where ever you cut it, all the species names you have in your hand are collectively more closely related to each other than they are to any of the others on the tree as they, and only they share a common ancestor which will be just above where you cut the branch. It is not the order that they are listed down the side that matters but the branching order that shows relationships. Real species are the tips of the branches and hypothetical common ancestors are the branch points.

You can do the same thing with distributions - draw a ring around, or join up, all of the species that come off a single branch point and you can regard that as a hypothetical ancestral distribution for their hypothetical ancestor. Some species disperse too far for it to mean much but start with close relatives and you may get a story - the warblers are fairly tidy. You can join up two closely most related species which come off a single branch point in New Zealand, then you can add on one, and then another from the islands in the Tasman Sea and the next stage is to link them back to New Guinea/northern Australia... The honey eaters are similar so it looks like both groups of birds link across the Coral Sea and down the northern Tasman Sea rather than just to the closest bit of Australia. If you don't have the right bird book type the name into google and you should get all you need to do this.

I'm not sure what constitutes a clear explanation here but its going to be a wet weekend so feel free to ask questions if you care. I may also know what some of the big words mean.

Ian

[Michael Szabo]

Another interesting study. Thanks for posting it, Ian.

I see it places Tui and Bellbird close together, with Tui arising 5 million years ago and Bellbird 2 million years ago, both from a lineage that branched off from its closest honeyeater 'rellies' 15 million years ago.

The other branch comprises two Pycnopygius honeayeaters: Marbled Honeyeater and Plain Honeyeater, both of which has a current distribution in New Guinea.

This is also interesting because previous genetic comparison suggests that the New Zealand Wattlebirds (Huia, Kokako, Saddleback) shared a common ancestor with the Satinbirds, Berrypeckers and Longbills of New Guinea.

[Jan]

Yes it's a wet weekend here too. These relationships don't have any link to the way NZ split from Gondwana way back, do they?
My plate tectonics is really rusty but maybe we were more connected as a continent to PNG and those areas up there, back then?

[Colin Miskelly]

Hi all

This study suggests that the sister group to tui + bellbird is a genus confined to Papua New Guinea and Indonesia. However, this is not the same as saying that the ancestor of tui and bellbird came from Papua New Guinea.

Australia has seen a rapid and diverse 'explosion' of honeyeaters over the past 15 million years. There is likely to have been considerable species turnover during this time, with some lineages dying out. An alternative explanation for why the nearest relative of the New Zealand honeyeaters is not found in Australia is that the common ancestor of Prosthemadera + Anthornis + Pycnopygius may have been an Australian species that left no surviving descendants on the continent.

Cheers
Colin

[Ian Southey]

Colin

You're right of course. Anything is possible in any case.

What I find interesting here is that there are now several groups of birds that appear to have this pattern - do they by chance have similar idiosyncrasies or might there be a particular underlying process behind it? I do bear in mind that some of the apparent relationships change as people sequence more DNA and find different ways to analyse it and I'm more interested in watching to see how things develop rather than defending it at this point.

If the relationship between Australian and New Zealand birds went beyond having a few blow across the Tasman from time to time that would really be interesting. Zealandia? - maybe not but island hopping during periods of low sea level might be possible or something else

Ian

[Liam Ballard]

So the current theory isn't that moa=cassowaries=emu etc? Or are you just talking about passerines?

[Ian Southey]

Liam

I'm implying anything from New Zealand that has its nearest relatives to the north and west toward New Guinea and northern Australia rather than the east or south might not have arrived here by being blown straight across the Tasman as many of our vagants are, including those that have colonised recently.

At present that might not include any of the ratites. Lately moa have been most closely linked to tinamous and kiwis to elephant birds so neither fits unless the ideas about how they are related change - again.

Ian

[Michael Szabo]

Yes, as Tim Low suggests in his 2014 book, "Where Song Began", New Guinea may still hold some 'Australian' lineages/species that did not survive in continental Australia as it drifted north, got hotter and drier, and lost some of its moist habitat/s. Some lineages/species may also have dispersed to New Zealand/Zealandia - as Ian says - by 'island-hopping' from continental Australia and/or New Caledonia via islands that are now submerged (due to sea-level rise) along the Dampier Ridge, Lord Howe Rise and/or Norfolk Ridge - rather than by flying directly across the Tasman from continental Australia to New Zealand/Zealandia 'in one go'.

The present distribution of Cyanoramphus parakeets in New Caledonia/Norfolk Island/New Zealand and of Norfolk Gerygone/Grey Warbler/Chatham Island Warbler, and the presence of Kaka and Kereru taxa on Norfolk Island (into the early 1800s) also point to this possibility.

This map in this article is a handy reference: http://www.m2now.co.nz/1-scientists-dis ... zealandia/