A lost world in Wallacea: Description of a montane archipelagic avifauna

Birds are the best-known animal class, with only about five or six new species descriptions per year since 1999. Integrating genomic and phenotypic research with arduous fieldwork in remote regions, we describe five new songbird species and five new subspecies from a small area near Sulawesi, Indone...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Science (American Association for the Advancement of Science) 2020-01, Vol.367 (6474), p.167-170
Main Authors: Rheindt, Frank E, Prawiradilaga, Dewi M, Ashari, Hidayat, Suparno, Gwee, Chyi Yin, Lee, Geraldine W X, Wu, Meng Yue, Ng, Nathaniel S R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Biodiversity
Extinction, Biological
Indonesia
Islands
Phylogeography
Songbirds - classification
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Summary:Birds are the best-known animal class, with only about five or six new species descriptions per year since 1999. Integrating genomic and phenotypic research with arduous fieldwork in remote regions, we describe five new songbird species and five new subspecies from a small area near Sulawesi, Indonesia, all collected in a single 6-week expedition. Two factors contributed to the description of this large number of species from such a small geographic area: (i) Knowledge of Quaternary Period land connections helped pinpoint isolated islands likely to harbor substantial endemism and (ii) studying accounts of historic collectors such as Alfred Wallace facilitated the identification of undercollected islands. Our findings suggest that humans' understanding of biogeographically complex regions such as Wallacea remains incomplete.
ISSN:0036-8075
1095-9203
DOI:10.1126/science.aax2146