Phylogenetic Reanalysis of Strauch's Osteological Data Set for the Charadriiformes

Abstract

Strauch' s (1978) compatibility analysis of relationships among the shorebirds (Charadriifonnes) was the first study to examine the full range of charadriifonn taxa in a reproducible way. Subsequently Mickevich and Parenti (1980) leveled serious charges against Strauch' s characters, method of phylogenetic inference, and results. To account for these charges, Strauch' s characters were reexamined and recoded, and parsimony analyses were performed on the revised matrix. A parsimony analysis on 74 taxa from the revised matrix yielded 855 shortest trees, each length = 286 and consistency index = 0.385. In each shortest tree there were two major lineages, a lineage of sandpiper-like birds and a lineage of ploverlike birds; the two formed a monophyletic group, with the auks (Alcidae) being that group' s sister taxon. The shortest trees were then compared with other estimates of shorebird relationships, comparison suggesting that the charges against Strauch' s results may have resulted from the Mickevich and Parenti decisions to exclude much of Strauch' s character evidence.

Phylogeny of Feather Mite Subfamily Avenzoariinae (Acari: Analgoidea: Avenzoariidae) Inferred from Combined Analyses of Molecular and Morphological Data

“…The division of Avenzoariinae into two big branches mirrors the division of the Charadriiformes into two parvordersCharadriida and Scolopacida (sensu Sibley and Ahlquist, 1990)-and supports the paraphylly of waders (Charadrii ϩ Scolopaci) as postulated by some recent authors (Strauch, 1978;Sibley and Ahlquist, 1990;Chu, 1995). The evolutionary parallelism is better expressed between the suborder Charadrii and the Bychovskiata-like group clades than between the Scolopaci and the Avenzoaria-like group.…”

“…Generally, their hypotheses provide a good match with our results for feather mites phylogenies Ehrnsberger, 1995, 1998;Dabert and Mironov, 1999;Mironov, 1998;Mironov and Dabert, 1999). For charadriiform birds we also tested a more detailed phylogeny reconstruction, prepared by Chu (1995). His reconstruction, based on a reanalysis of osteological data of Strauch (1978), is the most comprehensive and detailed cladistic analysis of Charadriiformes phylogeny so far.…”

Enigmatic phylogeny of skuas (Aves: Stercorariidae)

“…Both detailed morphological comparisons (Strauch 1978 ;Mickevitch & Parenti 1980 ;Chu 1995) and mtDNA phylogeny identify gulls as the sister-group of skuas. Gulls share with Stercorarius skuas a barred juvenile plumage and white-breasted alternate adult plumage.…”

The mitochondrial genome of the Saunders's gull Chroicocephalus saundersi (Charadriiformes: Laridae) and a higher phylogeny of shorebirds (Charadriiformes)

“…2 for other relationships within Laridae). Previous attempts at producing such a phylogeny using morphological characters or only a few gene regions have failed to produce a well-supported phylogeny depicting higher level relationships at the familial or generic levels within Charadriiformes, primarily because of the inconsistency and homoplasy of these data (Chu, 1995;Pons et al, 2005). In this study, the phylogenetic relationships of shorebirds were well established, based on the concatenated sets of amino acid sequences deduced from mitochondrial PCGs.…”