Hydropsalis albicauda (Lawrence, 1875)

Sigurðsson, Snorri & Cracraft, Joel, 2014, Deciphering the diversity and history of New World nightjars (Aves: Caprimulgidae) using molecular phylogenetics, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 170 (3), pp. 506-545 : 542-543

HYDROPSALIS ALBICAUDA (J.F. GMELIN, 1789)

Definition

Previously Caprimulgus cayennensis albicauda . It is elevated to full species status. It is the sister species of H. cayennensis .

Diagnosis

Very similar to H. cayennensis , a small, grey-brown nightjar with a broad tawny collar, a white throat patch, and conspicuous white colouring on wing and tail feathers, noticeably more than in H. cayennensis .

There is over 1.3% divergence in ND2 sequences between H. albicauda and H. cayennensis .

Comments

Genetic evidence in this study supports splitting H. cayennensis into two separate phylogenetic species ( Fig. 7 ). The subspecies H. a. albicauda , H. a. apertus, and H. a. insularis together form the phylospecies H. albicauda , whereas individuals belonging to the subspecies H. c. cayennensis and H. c. leopetes remain as the original nominate species Hydropsalis cayennensis . The status of the subspecies manati is unresolved.

Figures

Figure 7. A phylogeny of the Hydropsalis group of the South American clade based on a maximum-likelihood (ML) analysis of a concatenated 5298-bp molecular data set. ML bootstrap values higher than 60 and Bayesian posterior probability values higher than 0.95 are displayed on the nodes. Names on the tree represent current taxonomy; names on the right represent those resulting from this revision (see text).