Taxonomy of Porphryio

[THWorthy]

A paper has just been published on the taxonomy of Porphyrio species as follows
Dispersal and speciation in purple swamphens (Rallidae: Porphyrio)
Author(s): Juan C. Garcia-R. and Steve A. Trewick
Source: The Auk, 132(1):140-155. 2014.
It is a useful piece of work in that it supports the taxonomy established following consideration of multiple lines of evidence by Sangster et al (1999), and as followed by the NZ Checklist (2010). In this, for example, the NZ pukeko is considerd part of Porphyrio melanotus as are Australian, and all Oceanic populations. It is thus amazing that the authors of this new paper in part justified their work by writing "Seven species of purple swamphens are currently recognized,
4 of which are or were present in the Oceania region (Trewick 1996, Taylor 1998). Principal among these is the
widespread ‘‘supertramp’’ Purple Swamphen (Porphyrio porphyrio), which occurs from Africa and the Mediterranean
east to the Pacific (Ripley 1977)." It seems they were not aware of these basic taxonomic works, choosing to instead follow taxonomic ideas decades old. The data presented indicate quite recent divergences among taxa in the whole species complex. How these resolve with the fossil Porphyrio porphyrio nujagura Boles and Mackness, 1994 of about 4Ma old from Australia is not discussed. It is interesting to see that P. hochstetteri and P. mantelli remain as a grade of taxa implying more than one colonization event only about 2.5 Ma. At the same time this hypothesis of evolutionary rates in the gruops nicely explains why there are no Porphyrio in Australia of NZ fossil deposits of Late Oligicene to Late Miocene age.

[Ian Southey]

This seems to be the paper that these comments come from. Haven't read it but had a quick look at the tree only to find that although pretty, it is hard to see the detail. Maybe later...

Ian

[Ian Southey]

Oops

http://www.researchgate.net/publication ... phyrio_%29

I forgot a bit.

Ian

[Ian Southey]

This analysis of the relationships of Takahe and Moho now suggests that they each evolved here from a common ancestor rather than arriving seperately. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/mec.17227

Ian

[David Riddell]

Does this mean we might soon be able to go back to calling them Notornis?

[paradoxdinokipi]

I mean the species pair is still pretty deeply embedded in the Porphryio genus, so unless that genus gets heavily split into other genera (which I doubt), I'd assume they still remain in Porphryio.