Cryptic diversity in an endemic group of New Guinean songbirds

[Michael Szabo]

Birds have fascinated people for centuries and are among the best studied organisms to date. However, even among birds, there are still groups where we may have a poor understanding of true diversity. This Biology Letters paper combines advanced genetic methods and museum collections to study the species diversity of jewel-babblers from New Guinea. Subspecies, that were considered to be closely related, are in fact distinct species and plumage similarity is a poor proxy for species relatedness.

The blue jewel-babbler (Ptilorrhoa caerulescens) is a paraphyletic species complex and P. c. nigricrissus is more closely related to the phenotypically distinct and sexually dimorphic P. geislerorum, than to other P. caerulescens subspecies. These findings demonstrate that even in well-studied groups such as birds, cryptic diversity can still be a prevalent reality. Moreover, by deciphering cryptic diversity, we shed new light on the processes driving speciation within Ptilorrhoa and the need to potentially revise the taxonomic status of all subspecies.

Link to paper: https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/ ... nCbXRcImDg