Scops-Owls (1 Viewer)

[Daniel Philippe]

New paper:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2148-8-197.pdf

 

[wintibird]

New paper:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/content/pdf/1471-2148-8-197.pdf

Interesting. Thanks for letting us know.

André

 

[Richard Klim]

I note that Fuchs et al confirms that ussuriensis and lettia are not sister taxa. König et al 1999, IOC, and the Global Owl Project treat ussuriensis as a subspecies of Otus semitorques, Japanese Scops Owl. HBW and Clements recognise O. semitorques, but retain ussuriensis as a ssp of O. lettia (although HBW notes that ussuriensis is possibly better placed within O. semitorques).

It will be interesting to see the taxonomy to be followed by König & Weick (Owls of the World, 2nd Edition) - publication November 2008?

Richard

 

[l_raty]

König et al 1999, IOC, and the Global Owl Project treat ussuriensis as a subspecies of Otus semitorques, Japanese Scops Owl.

As far as cytochrome b sequences go, and assuming the sequences published in GenBank are correct, this quite clearly seems to be the thing to do.

Laurent -

 

[Xenospiza]

Laurent, I see flammeolus is basal to the American group in your tree.
Earlier (e.g. by König) it was assumed this was the only American ‘true’ Otus – has anyone else suggested it was a Megascops (which of course is not extremely surprising) after all?
I see: reference 18 in the article. I should stop just looking at trees!

 

[l_raty]

Laurent, I see flammeolus is basal to the American group in your tree.
Earlier (e.g. by König) it was assumed this was the only American ‘true’ Otus – has anyone else suggested it was a Megascops (which of course is not extremely surprising) after all?
I see: reference 18 in the article. I should stop just looking at trees!

Otus flammeolus actually appeared basal to Megascops in the trees published by Wink & Heidrich in König's book:
http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/fak14/ipmb/phazb/pubwink/1999/20. 1999.pdf
...but without support (<50% bootstrap support in NJ).

See also Wink & Heidrich 2000:
http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/fak14/ipmb/phazb/pubwink/2000/26. 2000.pdf
and Wink et al. 2004:
http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/fak14/ipmb/phazb/pubwink/2004/28.2004.pdf

What is causing the (or, at least, part of the) trouble in the cytochrome b analyses seems to be Pulsatrix. The position of this genus is poorly resolved in the published trees; it moves around a lot, being sister to Strix and/or Bubo, to (Megascops + flammeolus), or even to flammeolus alone, depending of the analysis, and always with low support. The last position would of course be a problem for the inclusion of flammeolus in Megascops. Unfortunately, there are very few published genetic data for Pulsatrix, so it's difficult to say more about this...

I've attached what I get in ML with publicly available COI sequences (the only other gene available for flammeolus and a variety of screech- and scops-owls). Here again, flammeolus groups with Megascops and not with Otus - with very high support. (Note also that, amazingly, Otus sensu lato is monophyletic in this tree [Ptilopsis not included] - but support is not very high at this node, so I guess this might easily be an artefact. [Or not...? :eek!

Incidentally, the separation of flammeolus in the monotypic genus Psiloscops has also been advocated (http://books.google.be/books?id=0t0...arch_s&sig=ACfU3U2-7Mwzp2bwTOyRYyQpim-gUS0rLw ).

Laurent -

 

[Daniel Philippe]

Wu M.Y. & Rheindt F.E., 2023. Continent-wide vocal leapfrog pattern in Collared Scops Owls obfuscates species boundaries. Avian Res. 14: 100141, 1-6.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2053716623000671