A striking new species of leaf warbler from the Lesser Sundas as uncovered through morphology and genomics - PubMed (original) (raw)

A striking new species of leaf warbler from the Lesser Sundas as uncovered through morphology and genomics

Nathaniel S R Ng et al. Sci Rep. 2018.

Abstract

Leaf warblers (Aves; Phylloscopidae) are a diverse clade of insectivorous, canopy-dwelling songbirds widespread across the Old World. The taxonomy of Australasian leaf warblers is particularly complex, with multiple species-level divergences between island taxa in the region requiring further scrutiny. We use a combination of morphology, bioacoustics, and analysis of thousands of genome-wide markers to investigate and describe a new species of Phylloscopus leaf warbler from the island of Rote in the Lesser Sundas, Indonesia. We show that this new Rote Leaf Warbler is morphologically and genomically highly distinct from its congenerics, but do not find vocal differentiation between different island taxa. We discuss the behaviour and ecology of this highly distinctive new species, and make recommendations about its conservation status. We believe this constitutes the first description of a novel bird species that is partly based on insights from massive amounts of genome-wide DNA markers.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Figure 1

Maps showing location of Rote island in Wallacea (inset) and field localities on Rote Island: Seda forest (A) and woodland close to Bolatena village on the Tapuafu peninsula (B). Map data: Google, DigitalGlobe.

Figure 2

Sonogram of two song types (A–B) from recording XC302571 (Timor), with each panel depicting a single strophe. Vocal characters: (1) strophe duration, (2) an example of a descending element, (3) an example of an ascending element, (4) an example of a V-shaped element, (5) another example of a descending element, (6) an example of a ∧-shaped element, (7) bandwidth frequency of a strophe, (8) an example of a complex element that is further divided into four parts, (i and iii) ∧-shaped, (ii and iv) V-shaped, (9) highest frequency of a strophe, (10) lowest frequency of a strophe.

Figure 3

Pictures from the field of the newly described Rote Leaf Warbler (on the left; PV) and the Timor Leaf Warbler P. presbytes from Mount Ramelau in Timor Leste (on the right; CT). The unusually long, colourful bill and overall more saturated yellowish plumage of the Rote Leaf Warbler are apparent.

Figure 4

Results from PCA analysis show leaf warbler populations from Peleng (n = 1), Rote (n = 1) and Timor (n = 2) to be genomically distinct. PC1 and PC2 refer to Principal components 1 and 2 respectively.

Figure 5

Results of maximum likelihood (ML) tree inference as applied to the mitochondrial cytochrome-b locus. Both ML and maximum parsimony (MP) returned identical tree topologies. The ML tree is used here, and branch lengths represent relative genetic distance. Node support higher than 70 is shown and represents values from ML and MP analyses respectively. The Timor Leaf Warblers cluster together with high branch support to the exclusion of the Rote Leaf Warbler.

Figure 6

Maximum Likelihood tree from concatenated genomic read data (1,443,756 bp from 10,064 loci). Branch lengths reflect relative genetic distance. Branch support values higher than 70 are shown.

Figure 7

Principal component analysis plots of (A) songs [9 parameters] and (B) calls [19 parameters] of the Lesser Sundaic Phylloscopus leaf warblers. Ellipses represent 95% confidence intervals of each taxon.

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A striking new species of leaf warbler from the Lesser Sundas as uncovered through morphology and genomics - PubMed (original) (raw)