Ornithologists maintain figured out a recent species of berrypecker (genus Melanocharis) in cloud woodland within the Kumawa Mountains of western Recent Guinea (West Papua province, Indonesia), one in all the closing biologically underexplored regions of the enviornment. The invention is outlined in a paper within the journal Ibis.
The satin berrypecker (Melanocharis citreola), adult male. Image credit ranking: Borja Milá.
Melanocharis is a minute genus of passerine birds within the family Melanocharitidae (the berrypeckers and longbills).
These birds stay within the forests of Recent Guinea and feed on berries and minute arthropods.
Unless now, the genus contained 5 species: the mid-mountain berrypecker (Melanocharis longicauda), the sunless berrypecker (Melanocharis nigra), the streaked berrypecker (Melanocharis striativentris), the fantailed berrypecker (Melanocharis versteri), and the imprecise berrypecker (Melanocharis arfakiana).
“The invention and description of avian diversity internationally stays a predominant worry in ornithology,” Dr. Borja Milá, lead author and a researcher at the National Museum of Pure Sciences at the Spanish National Compare Council, and his colleagues from Spain, France, Sweden, Czech Republic and Indonesia wrote of their paper.
“Few regions of the enviornment remain as underexplored because the mountainous regions of Recent Guinea, and the diversity and evolutionary historical past of its fauna and plant life are mute poorly acknowledged.”
“In 2014 and 2017, we had the choice to stare the avifauna within the Bird’s Head Isthmus of western Recent Guinea, including the somewhat unexplored Kumawa Mountains,” they added.
“We first explored the Kumawa Mountains within the route of a short consult with in November 2014, in which we were in a position to stare birds at 1,100-1,200 m above sea stage in a mid-montane woodland habitat for four days, the utilization of mist-nets and visual observations.”
“In the closing day of our protect, at an elevation of 1,200 m above sea stage, we observed and captured a male bird that we identified as a member of an undescribed taxon within the genus Melanocharis.”
“To further locate this finding and carry out further specimens, we returned to the Kumawas for an extended expedition in October-November 2017.”
The newly-figured out species, named the satin berrypecker (Melanocharis citreola), is certain from assorted members of the genus in plumage coloration, morphological measurements, and genetic markers.
“The satin berrypecker is most attention-grabbing the second species to be described in Recent Guinea within the closing 80 years, and represents the first acknowledged endemic species to the Bird’s Neck space,” the researchers wrote.
“This implies that exclusively a few assorted species-stage undescribed bird taxa would possibly maybe maybe remain to be figured out on the island, and is a reflection of the thorough surveys that ornithologists earlier than us maintain performed across the space with a lot effort over the closing a entire lot of an extended time.”
The main characteristics of the satin berrypecker are iridescent blue-sunless upperparts, satin-white underparts washed lemon yellow, and white outer edges to the external rectrices.
“The recent species would possibly maybe maybe moreover be readily assigned to Melanocharis by the expansive sunless invoice and iridescent blue-sunless upper ingredients contrasting with lighter underparts,” the scientists wrote.
“It would possibly maybe well most likely maybe moreover be a lot from all assorted members of the genus by the satin-white underparts, washed lemon yellow.”
“It has a white outer vane of the outermost rectrix, when put next with the two outermost rectrices within the mid-mountain berrypecker, which is moreover smaller and has yellowish-gray underparts.”
“The fantailed berrypecker has an extended tail with more wide white patches on a entire lot of external rectrices, and grey underparts.”
According to the crew’s bewitch facts, the recent species appears to be like to be extraordinary, nonetheless doubtlessly no longer rare, and became captured at the the same charge as assorted species acknowledged to be extraordinary within the woodland despite reasonable bewitch charges in mist-nets.
“Before every thing belief to signify a conclude relative of the mid-mountain berrypecker in step with elevation and plumage color traits, a entire phylogenetic prognosis of the genus in step with fats mitogenomes and genome-huge nuclear facts revealed that the recent species is in level of truth sister to the phenotypically dissimilar streaked berrypecker,” the authors wrote.
“Phylogenetic relationships at some stage within the family Melanocharitidae, including all for the time being acknowledged genera, expose that this family endemic to the island of Recent Guinea diverse within the route of the predominant uplift of Recent Guinea within the Heart and Slack Miocene (14-6 million years ago), and represents an evolutionary radiation with excessive disparity in invoice morphology and signaling traits across species.”
_____
Borja Milá et al. A brand recent, undescribed species of Melanocharis berrypecker from western Recent Guinea and the evolutionary historical past of the family Melanocharitidae. Ibis, revealed online June 11, 2021; doi: 10.1111/ibi.12981
