Purpureicephalus, Bonaparte, 1854

Smith, Brian Tilston, Thom, Gregory & Joseph, Leo, 2024, Revised Evolutionary And Taxonomic Synthesis For Parrots (Order: Psittaciformes) Guided By Phylogenomic Analysis, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2024 (468), pp. 1-87 : 62

Purpureicephalus

Purpureicephalus spurius is a midsized, extraordinarily colored parrot. It has a strongly demarcated maroon-red crown, greenish yellow face, purplish underparts, yellow rump, green back and a long, attenuated blue tail. It has an unusually long maxilla with which it can extract seeds from the fruits of a cooccurring eucalypt, the marri Corymbia calophylla . It occurs in forest and woodland in southwest Australia and within this area shows no geographic variation. Purpureicephalus lies on a long branch diverging from the clade containing Psephotellus and Clarkona 9.8 Mya (4.6–13.6; figs. 1, 11). Its continued recognition as a monotypic genus is warranted on genomic, phenotypic, and biogeographical grounds. Notably among platycercine parrots, it is broadly sympatric with the largest and smallest of the Barnardius and Platycercus parrots, respectively. Any close affinity with Platycercus adscitus due to its unusually purplish blue ventral coloring has long been dispelled as has Cain’s (1955) suggestion that Purpureicephalus and Eunymphicus should be synonymized.