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Anatidae (1 Viewer)

Yes, there has been a bit of a lull in papers in the past few weeks. I usually pick up a few interesting papers from my different Google Scholar alerts, but something a bit strange has been happening with them recently (more frequent alerts and fewer relevant papers).
 
I have trouble keeping up with my own field never mind ornithology, so its sometimes hard for me to tell the difference between people not posting or stuff not being published.

And IOC, NACC, and Taxonomy in flux have also been quiet lately, adding to the boredom!
 
This increasingly justifies the division of Melanitta into Melanitta and Oidemia
Completely agree! Older than Polysticta, Mergellus and Lophodytes. Oidemia are really different as well.

Also interesting to note the relatively old age of splits within Common Merganser assemblage (Common, Scaly-bellied, Auckland and Brazilian), at least compared to the very young divergences in Somateria. Only mtDNA though, can ancient introgression explain the latter?
 
It's always good to be cautious about trees and dating that rely solely on mitochondrial DNA, especially for groups that are not the focus of the paper (e.g. anything that is not a Merganser).
 
On the phylogeny and taxonomy lull, we have had an important paper on avian phylogeny this year. As someone who looks down the phylogenetic tree (or do I mean up the tree) rather than looking up from a species checklist it's been a good year, with significant papers on fish and angiosperms as well as the bird one.
 
Scribner, K.T., Talbot, S.L., Pierson, B.J., Robinson, J.D., Lanctot, R.B., Esler, D. and Dickson, K. (2024), A phylogeographical study of the discontinuously distributed Harlequin Duck (Histrionicus histrionicus). Ibis. https://doi.org/10.1111/ibi.13336

Species distributions are often indicative of historical biogeographical events and contemporary spatial biodiversity patterns. The Harlequin Duck Histrionicus histrionicus is a sea duck of conservation concern that has a disjunct distribution, with discrete portions of its range associated with northern Pacific and Atlantic Ocean basins. Movement data indicate migratory connectivity within regions of each ocean basin but not cross-continent dispersal, suggesting that genetic structuring could exist at multiple spatial scales. Little is known regarding the impacts of past vicariance events on the species phylogeographical structure and historical demography, or rates of gene flow at different spatial scales. We used data from microsatellite loci and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences to quantify levels of genetic diversity within, and the extent of spatial genetic differentiation among locations sampled at multiple spatial scales across the species range. Samples were collected at nonbreeding locations, which represent groupings appropriate for characterizing genetically differentiated subgroups at regional and continental scales. Collectively, genetic data and coalescence modelling suggested that individuals colonized regions currently occupied within both ocean basins in the Holocene from a single refuge in the Atlantic. Further, it seems likely there was secondary contact with lineages derived from populations in Asia, based on the shallow species-wide mtDNA phylogeny and high incidence of recently derived private mtDNA haplotypes. Estimates of inter-location variance in microsatellite allele and mtDNA haplotype frequency were moderate and significant between western (Pacific – North America) and eastern (Atlantic – North America, Greenland and Iceland) ocean basins and among sampling groups within each ocean basin. Genetic differentiation among sampling groups was particularly evident at the species distributional margins in the Atlantic (Iceland) and the Pacific (Shemya Island) Ocean basins. Coalescent modelling results suggest that contemporary spatial genetic patterns in the species arose through the combined influences of secondary contact, shared ancestry and gene flow after the last glacial maxima.
 

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