TY - JOUR

T1 - Systematics, biogeography, and diversification of Scytalopus tapaculos (Rhinocryptidae), an enigmatic radiation of Neotropical montane birds

AU - Cadena, Carlos Daniel

AU - Cuervo, Andrés M.

AU - Céspedes, Laura N.

AU - Bravo, Gustavo A.

AU - Krabbe, Niels

AU - Schulenberg, Thomas S.

AU - Derryberry, Graham E.

AU - Silveira, Luis Fabio

AU - Derryberry, Elizabeth P.

AU - Brumfield, Robb T.

AU - Fjeldså, Jon

N1 - Funding Information: A study of this sort would have been impossible without support from natural history collections over many years. We thank the following institutions for providing tissue samples from specimens under their care: Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexler University (N. Rice), American Museum of Natural History (P. Sweet and J. Cracraft), Coleção de Ornitologia do Museu de Ciências e Tecnologia da Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio Grande do Sul (C. Fontana), Colección Ornitológica Phelps (J. Pérez-Emán and M. Lentino), Harvard University Museum of Comparative Zoology (S. V. Edwards and J. Trimble), Instituto Alexander von Humboldt (J. D. Palacio, D. López and M. Álvarez), Instituto de Ciencias Naturales de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia (F. G. Stiles), Marjorie Barrick Museum (J. Klicka), Museo de Ciencias Naturales La Salle (M. Salcedo), Museu Paraense Emílio Goeldi (A. Aleixo), The Field Museum (D. Willard and J. Bates), The University of Kansas Natural History Museum (A. T. Peterson, R. Moyle, and M. Robbins), United States National Museum of Natural History (G. Graves and R. T. Chesser), and University of New Mexico Museum of Southwestern Biology (C. Witt and A. Johnson). R. Fraga and J. I. Areta provided samples of specimens at the Museo de La Plata and the Museo de Ciencias Naturales Guillermo Enrique Hudson. We are especially grateful to the many collectors who contributed specimens of these difficult birds to museum collections over decades. For collaboration at various stages of this project we thank our colleagues working on Brazilian Scytalopus, H. Mata, P. Pulido, G. Maurício, M. Bornschein, R. Belmonte-Lópes, and S. Bonatto. E. Valderrama, J. Battilana, R. Beco, L. Neves, and Rapid Genomics provided valuable assistance with laboratory work. We thank P. Hosner for providing sequences of specimens at the University of Kansas. Genomic analyses were run on the Odyssey cluster supported by the FAS Division of Science, Research Computing Group at Harvard University. The manuscript was improved thanks to comments from anonymous reviewers. Funding statement: Financial support was provided through grants by the Chapman Fund of the American Museum of Natural History and the Facultad de Ciencias at Universidad de los Andes to C.D.C.; the National Science Foundation— NSF to R.T.B. (DEB-1146265, DEB-0910285) and E.P.D. (DEB-1146423); the São Paulo Research Foundation—FAPESP to G.A.B. and L.F.S. (2012-23852-0); the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development— CNPq to G.A.B. and L.F.S. (457974-2014-1); and the Society of Systematic Biologists, the Alexander Wetmore Memorial Research Fund of the American Ornithologists’ Union, and the Louis Agassiz Fuertes Award of the Wilson Ornithological Society to A.M.C. Ethics statement: The study followed all regulations and complied with necessary permits. Author contributions: C.D.C., A.M.C., J.F., N.K., and T.S.S. conceived the study. C.D.C., A.M.C., and G.A.B. collected data. C.D.C. and J.F. wrote the paper with input from all other coauthors. A.M.C., L.N.C., G.A.B., and G.E.D. developed methods or analyzed the data. C.D.C., A.M.C., G.A.B., L.F.S., E.P.D., and R.T.B. contributed substantial materials, resources, or funding. Data deposits: GenBank accession numbers are provided in Supplementary Material Table S1 and alignments are available through the GitHub repository: https://github.com/ cdanielcadena/Scytalopus. Publisher Copyright: Copyright © American Ornithological Society 2020. All rights reserved. For permissions, e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

PY - 2020

Y1 - 2020

N2 - We studied the phylogeny, biogeography, and diversification of suboscine passerines in the genus Scytalopus (Rhinocryptidae), a widespread, species-rich, and taxonomically challenging group of Neotropical birds. We analyzed nuclear (exons, regions flanking ultraconserved elements) and mitochondrial (ND2) DNA sequence data for a taxonomically and geographically comprehensive sample of specimens collected from Costa Rica to Patagonia and Brazil. We found that Scytalopus is a monophyletic group sister to Eugralla and consists of 3 main clades roughly distributed in (1) the Southern Andes, (2) eastern Brazil, and (3) the Tropical Andes and Central America. The clades from the Southern Andes and eastern Brazil are sister to each other. Despite their confusing uniformity in plumage coloration, body shape, and overall appearance, rates of species accumulation through time in Scytalopus since the origin of the clade in the Late Miocene are unusually high compared with those of other birds, suggesting rapid non-adaptive diversification in the group. We attribute this to their limited dispersal abilities making them speciation-prone and their occurrence in a complex landscape with numerous barriers promoting allopatric differentiation. Divergence times among species and downturns in species accumulation rates in recent times suggest that most speciation events in Scytalopus predate climatic oscillations of the Pleistocene. Our analyses identified various cases of strong genetic structure within species and lack of monophyly of taxa, flagging populations which likely merit additional study to clarify their taxonomic status. In particular, detailed analyses of species limits are due in S. parvirostris, S. latrans, S. speluncae, the S. atratus complex, and the Southern Andes clade.

AB - We studied the phylogeny, biogeography, and diversification of suboscine passerines in the genus Scytalopus (Rhinocryptidae), a widespread, species-rich, and taxonomically challenging group of Neotropical birds. We analyzed nuclear (exons, regions flanking ultraconserved elements) and mitochondrial (ND2) DNA sequence data for a taxonomically and geographically comprehensive sample of specimens collected from Costa Rica to Patagonia and Brazil. We found that Scytalopus is a monophyletic group sister to Eugralla and consists of 3 main clades roughly distributed in (1) the Southern Andes, (2) eastern Brazil, and (3) the Tropical Andes and Central America. The clades from the Southern Andes and eastern Brazil are sister to each other. Despite their confusing uniformity in plumage coloration, body shape, and overall appearance, rates of species accumulation through time in Scytalopus since the origin of the clade in the Late Miocene are unusually high compared with those of other birds, suggesting rapid non-adaptive diversification in the group. We attribute this to their limited dispersal abilities making them speciation-prone and their occurrence in a complex landscape with numerous barriers promoting allopatric differentiation. Divergence times among species and downturns in species accumulation rates in recent times suggest that most speciation events in Scytalopus predate climatic oscillations of the Pleistocene. Our analyses identified various cases of strong genetic structure within species and lack of monophyly of taxa, flagging populations which likely merit additional study to clarify their taxonomic status. In particular, detailed analyses of species limits are due in S. parvirostris, S. latrans, S. speluncae, the S. atratus complex, and the Southern Andes clade.

KW - andes

KW - cryptic species

KW - furnariida

KW - neotropics

KW - non-adaptive radiation

KW - phylogeography

KW - speciation

U2 - 10.1093/auk/ukz077

DO - 10.1093/auk/ukz077

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85085029393

VL - 137

JO - Ornithology

JF - Ornithology

SN - 0004-8038

IS - 2

M1 - ukz077

ER -