Lamproliinae

Schoddei, Richard & Christidis, Les, 2014, Relicts from Tertiary Australasia: undescribed families and subfamilies of songbirds (Passeriformes) and their zoogeographic signal, Zootaxa 3786 (5), pp. 501-522 : 515-516

Subfamily Lamproliinae , subfamilia nova ―silktails

Type genus: Lamprolia Finsch, 1874

Diagnosis. Medium-small, rather slender black songbirds with glossed or spangled plumage over the head, and patches of silky white exposed over rump and central tail feathers ( Lamprolia ) or hidden in base of inner wing coverts ( Chaetorhynchus ); sexes nearly monomorphic, females smaller and rather duller than males; head broad, the bill flycatcher-like, all black, maxilla well-hooked, mandible with unguinal ridge, tomia smooth except for terminal maxillary notch, narial depression elliptic, with inoperculate, holorhinal, internally pervious nostrils opening externally in round apertures distal in narial depression, rictal bristles coarse, extending to near tip of bill in Chaetorhynchus ; skull ( Chaetorhynchus ) with near-imperforate interorbital septum, narrow, short-winged ectethmoids that reach the jugal bar, round-lobed maxillo-palatines, short-horned vomer, broad palatine shelf with shallowly attenuate transpalatine processes, slender pterygoids fused to the palatine shelf, and moderately large, oblate temporal fossae flanked by short, terete, ventrally projecting postorbital processes and short, simple, spiny, anteriorly projecting zygomatic processes; sternum ( Chaetorhynchus ) narrow, especially distally, with deep keel 1 x sternum width, lateral trabeculae medium-long, c. ⅓–½ x length of sternum, abruptly and slightly flared at tips, sternal rostrum moderately long and deeply bilaterally compressed; wings ( Chaetorhynchus ) broadly rounded, primaries 10 with p10 moderately developed, p6> p5=p7> p8> p4; humeral fossae ( Chaetorhynchus ) single with deep trabeculated outer fossa, rather shallow incisura capitis, moderately protuberant ventral tubercle and short pectoral crest not decurrent below fossa; tail medium-long and slightly rounded in Lamprolia , longer, narrower and square-tipped in Chaetorhynchus , tail/wing ratio (0.83–)0.84–0.87(–0.91), the 12 rectrices slightly flared with broadly truncated outer to rounded inner tips ( Chaetorhynchus ); feet short, faintly scutellate to booted. Nest a bulky cup of closely interwoven tendrils, fiber, rootlets and shredded bark strips, lined with down and feathers, camouflaged loosely with green moss and leafy liverworts, and suspended at the rim from a horizontal fork in saplings c. 1–3 m above the ground, usually under a large protecting leaf ( Lamprolia ); eggs c. 1 per clutch, whitishpink, blotched sparsely lilac and dull red-brown ( Lamprolia ). Arboreal, forest-living insectivores of lower forest stages, sallying and hawking from set perches and gleaning along branches, with bowing and tail flicking ( Coates 1990: 142; Pratt et al. 1987: 248); apparently monogamous.

Range and composition. Lower montane rainforests of New Guinea, and rainforests of Fiji; two genera: Chaetorhynchus Meyer, 1874 , of one species: C. papuensis Meyer, 1874 , New Guinea; Lamprolia Finsch, 1874 , of one species: L. victoriae Finsch, 1874 , Fiji.

Nomenclature. Although the generic names of the two silktails were published in the same year, choice of the type genus, Lamprolia , for forming the subfamily name here was guided by Article 64 of the Code, not Article 24. Article 64 directs that any included nominal genus treated as valid in the new family-group is eligible; thus no first reviser action is required.

Group name. With the finding that Chaetorhynchus is not a drongo, it seems advisable to avoid its misleading English name, Pygmy Drongo. We suggest ‘Silktail’ as the least disturbing group name for the members of this subfamily, for which the distinguishing species names ‘Papuan’ ( C. papuensis ) and ‘Fiji’ ( L. victoriae ) would then be suitable.