Contrasting evolutionary histories in Neotropical birds: Divergence across an environmental barrier in South America

Abstract

Avian diversity in the Neotropics has been traditionally attributed to the effect of vicariant forces promoting speciation in allopatry. Recent studies have shown that phylogeographical patterns shared among codistributed species cannot be explained by a single vicariant event, as species responses to a common barrier depend on the biological attributes of each taxon. The open vegetation corridor (OVC) isolates Amazonia and the Andean forests from the Atlantic Forest, creating a notorious pattern of avian taxa that are disjunctly codistributed in these forests. Here, we studied and compared the evolutionary histories of Ramphotrigon megacephalum and Pipraeidea melanonota, two passerines with allopatric populations east and west of the OVC that represent different subspecies. These species differ in their biological attributes: R. megacephalum is a sedentary, forest specialist mostly confined to bamboo understorey, whereas P. melanonota is a seasonal migrant and generalist species that ranges in a variety of closed and semi‐open environments. We performed genetic and genomic analyses, complemented with the study of coloration and behavioural differentiation, to assess population divergence across the OVC. We found that the evolutionary histories of both R. megacephalum and P. melanonota have been shaped by this environmental barrier. However, these species responded in different and asynchronous manners to the establishment of the OVC and to past connections between the currently isolated South American forests, which can be mostly explained by their distinct ecologies and dispersal abilities. Our results support the fact that the biological attributes of species can make their evolutionary histories idiosyncratic.

Molecular phylogenetics and phenotypic reassessment of the Ramphotrigon flycatchers: deep paraphyly in the context of an intriguing biogeographic scenario

“…Interestingly, the belly of these two subspecies was the only plumage patch that showed both statistical and perceptual significant differences among all comparisons made (above). This difference in the plumage coloration of the belly adds to the deep genetic and vocal divergence between R. m. megacephalum and R. m. bolivianum reported by Lavinia et al (), and contrasts with the lack of morphological differentiation reported here.…”

“…The Atlantic Forest could have been colonized from western Amazonia via elevated land bridges and forest corridors that connected the Andes to the Brazilian shields. Alternatively, the appearance of the open and dry environments that currently isolate the Amazonia from the Atlantic Forest could have disrupted a former continuous distribution of R. megacephalum (Lavinia et al for a more detailed discussion on this subject).…”

“…1). Based on the results from Lavinia et al (), which showed that these geographically isolated subspecies should be considered different species based on deep genetic divergence and vocal differentiation, we treated them as two distinct taxa for all analyses. The other two species of this genus, R. ruficauda and R. fuscicauda , as well as D. flammulatus , are monotypic.…”

“…For details on laboratory protocols, including DNA extraction, PCR primers and conditions, see Lavinia et al ().…”

Functional Significance of Anatomical Accommodation in the Skull of Common Hoopoe, Upupa Epops (Bucerotiformes, Upupidae)

“…Th ese studies led to separate the hoopoe from Coraciiformes into other order and then in 2017, it has been jointed with the hornbills into Bucerotiformes order ( (Mayr, 2000;Gill & Donsker, 2017). Although, we were noticed that many molecular studies were concentrated on the phylogenetic relationships between bird species (Lavinia et al, 2019;Barreira et al, 2016;Lijtmaer et al, 2012;Campagna et al, 2012) but the study of avian cranio-mandibular system is still interesting subject (Demmel Ferreira et al, 2019;Zelenkov, 2017;Fabbri et al, 2017;Ni et al, 2017) to try understand the functional ecological classifi cation of bird species beside clarify some modifi cations that specifi c to each species ( species-specifi c feature).…”