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. 2015 Feb 4;2(2):140375.
doi: 10.1098/rsos.140375. eCollection 2015 Feb.

Rapid diversification and secondary sympatry in Australo-Pacific kingfishers (Aves: Alcedinidae: Todiramphus)

Michael J Andersen  1 , Hannah T Shult  1 , Alice Cibois  2 , Jean-Claude Thibault  3 , Christopher E Filardi  4 , Robert G Moyle  1
Affiliations

Rapid diversification and secondary sympatry in Australo-Pacific kingfishers (Aves: Alcedinidae: Todiramphus)

Michael J Andersen et al. R Soc Open Sci. .

Abstract

Todiramphus chloris is the most widely distributed of the Pacific's 'great speciators'. Its 50 subspecies constitute a species complex that is distributed over 16 000 km from the Red Sea to Polynesia. We present, to our knowledge, the first comprehensive molecular phylogeny of this enigmatic radiation of kingfishers. Ten Pacific Todiramphus species are embedded within the T. chloris complex, rendering it paraphyletic. Among these is a radiation of five species from the remote islands of Eastern Polynesian, as well as the widespread migratory taxon, Todiramphus sanctus. Our results offer strong support that Pacific Todiramphus, including T. chloris, underwent an extensive range expansion and diversification less than 1 Ma. Multiple instances of secondary sympatry have accumulated in this group, despite its recent origin, including on Australia and oceanic islands in Palau, Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands. Significant ecomorphological and behavioural differences exist between secondarily sympatric lineages, which suggest that pre-mating isolating mechanisms were achieved rapidly during diversification. We found evidence for complex biogeographic patterns, including a novel phylogeographic break in the eastern Solomon Islands that separates a Northern Melanesian clade from Polynesian taxa. In light of our results, we discuss systematic relationships of Todiramphus and propose an updated taxonomy. This paper contributes to our understanding of avian diversification and assembly on islands, and to the systematics of a classically polytypic species complex.

Keywords: Todiramphus chloris; divergence time estimation; diversification rates; great speciators; island biogeography.

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Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Map illustrating sampling of the Todiramphus chloris species complex used in this study. Circles, squares and triangles represent sampling points for T. chloris, T. sanctus and other (non-T. chloris) ingroup taxa, respectively. Coloured distributions correspond to the 11 major phylogenetic lineages of the T. chloris species complex and match the coloured clades in the inset phylogeny. The inset topology is from the BEAST tree (figure 3) with clades labelled A–G matching those from the MrBayes tree (figure 2). Points are not scaled to the number of sampled individuals per locality (the reader is referred to the electronic supplementary material, table S1 for numbers of individuals sampled).
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Molecular phylogeny of the Todiramphus chloris species complex. The tree is the Bayesian maximum consensus tree from the concatenated, partitioned analysis with full sampling (n=158 tips). Node support is denoted as Bayesian posterior probabilities/maximum-likelihood bootstrap support. Branch lengths of Actenoides and Syma were reduced to save space. Lettered clades (A–I) are discussed in the text.
Figure 3.
Figure 3.
Time-calibrated maximum clade credibility tree with 95% highest posterior density bars from the BEAST analysis. Node support is given as Bayesian posterior probability (PP): black circles at nodes denote PP=1.0, grey circles denote 0.95≤PP≤0.99. Unlabelled nodes denote PP<0.95. The red vertical line denotes the bGMYC species delimitation estimate (i.e. the bGMYC analysis identified as species all clades to the right of the line). Sympatric lineages are identified by colour-coded labels that correspond to their respective distributions on the map. Note that T. sanctus is distributed across two coloured areas (green Australia and orange Solomon Islands). Actenoides hombroni, Syma and Todiramphus nigrocyaneus were removed from the base of the tree to save space. Lettered clades (A–I) are discussed in the text and correspond to the same clades in figure 2. Illustrations of the sampled lineages from Palau (T. c. teraokai) and Vanuatu (T. c. santoensis) were not available, so representative taxa from their respective clades were used (T. c. chloris and T. c. juliae, respectively). Illustrations courtesy of the Handbook of the Birds of the World, Lynx Edicions.
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