Eclectus, Wagler, 1832

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 : 51

Eclectus

Eclectus occurs from across New Guinea and its surrounding islands to the Solomon Islands in the east, far northeastern Australia in the south and Sumba in the Lesser Sundas in the west. Across its range it exhibits considerable geographic variation in size and plumage color while maintaining the oft-remarked exceptional sexual dichromatism of red and blue (female) and green (male) forms ( Heinsohn et al., 2005). The phylogenetic placement of Eclectus has remained stable and the genus is unquestionably monophyletic. The remaining taxonomic questions deal with whether subspecies should be elevated to species. Using captive individuals and mtDNA, Braun et al. (2016) inferred phylogenetic relationships among six of the nine described subspecies. They found deep phylogeographic structure representing an Indonesian clade and a New Guinea / Solomon Islands clade. The available data indicate there are up to four phylogenetic species in the clade, but until genomic data from wild specimens is published, the recognition of a single species should be maintained.