title: Systematic placement of an enigmatic Southeast Asian taxon Eupetes macrocerus and implications for the biogeography of a main songbird radiation, the Passerida.
abstract: Biogeographic connections between Australia and other continents are still poorly understood although the plate tectonics of the Indo-Pacific region is now well described. Eupetes macrocerus is an enigmatic taxon distributed in a small area on the Malay Peninsula and on Sumatra and Borneo. It has generally been associated with Ptilorrhoa in New Guinea on the other side of Wallace's Line, but a relationship with the West African Picathartes has also been suggested. Using three nuclear markers, we demonstrate that Eupetes is the sister taxon of the South African genus Chaetops, and their sister taxon in turn being Picathartes, with a divergence in the Eocene. Thus, this clade is distributed in remote corners of Africa and Asia, which makes the biogeographic history of these birds very intriguing. The most parsimonious explanation would be that they represent a relictual basal group in the Passerida clade established after a long-distance dispersal from the Australo-Papuan region to Africa. Many earlier taxonomic arrangements may have been based on assumptions about relationships with similar-looking forms in the same, or adjacent, biogeographic regions, and revisions with molecular data may uncover such cases of neglect of ancient relictual patterns reflecting past connections between the continents.
authors.affiliation: Vertebrate Department, Zoological Museum, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, 2100 Copenhagen Ø, Denmark. kajonsson@snm.ku.dk
authors.forename: Knud A
authors.initials: KA
authors.lastname: Jønsson
authors.forename: Jon
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fjeldså
authors.forename: Per G P
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Ericson
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Irestedt
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001483:Base Sequence; D001499:Bayes Theorem; D003710:Demography; D005843:Geography; D005987:Glyceraldehyde-3-Phosphate Dehydrogenases / Q000235:genetics; D007214:Indonesia; D008296:Malaysia; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008969:Molecular Sequence Data; D009211:Myoglobin / Q000235:genetics; D009955:Ornithine Decarboxylase / Q000235:genetics; D046109:Passeriformes / Q000145:classification* / Q000235:genetics*; D010802:Phylogeny; D017422:Sequence Analysis, DNA
chemical_list: D009211:Myoglobin; D005987:Glyceraldehyde-3-Phosphate Dehydrogenases; D009955:Ornithine Decarboxylase