Trichoglossus

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 : 72-74

Trichoglossus

Trichoglossus lorikeets often have clearly discrete colors across their heads, wings, chest, and bellies. A differently colored nuchal collar is also scintil- dorsal

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339121

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FIGURE lata images present in many forms. Narrow, dark terminal barring is on underparts’ plumage.

The reconfigured Trichoglossus sensu Joseph et al. (2020) brought morphological homogeneity to the clade in that it now comprises species of similar size and gross morphology and that are also biogeographically cohesive, albeit occurring over a large geographic area. Despite improved circumscription of Trichoglossus , its extraordinary color variation still presents challenges in understanding species limits within it. Most of the current uncertainty lies with the Rainbow Lorikeet ( Trichoglossus haematodus ) complex, long considered one of the most polytypic bird species. Recent taxonomic revisions have led to recognition of 10 species, mostly from elevating variants of typically “rainbow” plumaged T. haematodus to species rank ( haematodus , rosenbergii, moluccanus, rubritorquis , capistratus, and forsteni), as well as the yellow-billed and yellow-tailed but otherwise almost uniformly maroon-plumaged species usually treated at species rank ( rubiginosus ) and taxa that are mostly green-plumaged birds (chlorolepidotus, euteles , and weberi). Based on subspecific sampling and phylogenomic data it is unclear whether these currently recognized species limits define monophyletic groups ( Smith et al., 2020; Joseph et al., 2020). Both rubiginosus and chlorolepidotus appear to be outside the main Rainbow Lorikeet radiation, although their exact relationships to each other and Trichoglossus was not stable. For this reason, we refrain from using Oenopsittacus Reichenbach, 1913 , of which T. rubiginosus is the type species for either or both of these species. We are currently employing an approach that uses whole-genome data and population-level sampling to further attempt to differentiate relationships and species limits in Trichoglossus . The extraordinary Trichoglossus radiation has a crown age 4.6 Ma (1.2–7.4; fig. 14).