Rhagologidae, Schoddei & Christidis, 2014

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 : 510

Family Rhagologidae , familia nova ―false whistlers

Type genus: Rhagologus Stresemann & Paludan, 1934

Diagnosis. Medium-small, slim, nondescript grey-brown songbirds of pachycephalid form but with discolorous rufous crissa; sexes dimorphic: males dull grey or brownish with muted ventral mottling, and females and juveniles cinnamon-faced and brightly streaked and spotted white on dorsum and ventrum respectively; head and bill Pachycephala -like, the former more slender, the latter with smooth tomia except for terminal maxillary notch, and narial depression elliptic, with semi-operculate, holorhinal and internally pervious nostrils opening externally in an elliptic aperture distal in narial depression, rictal bristles coarse but sparse; skull with fully perforate interorbital septum except for narrow medial bar, short-winged ectethmoids that do not reach the jugal bar, small free lachrymals, a palate with bi-horned vomer with truncated tips, slender, round-tipped maxillo-palatine processes, and broad, shallow and ill-defined temporal fossae flanked by vestigial postorbital and zygomatic processes; sternum moderately narrow, with well-developed keel c. ⅔–¾ x sternum width, lateral trabeculae short, c. ⅓ x length of sternum, much flared at tips, sternal rostrum well-developed and deeply compressed bilaterally; wings narrowly rounded, primaries 10, with p10 moderately developed, p7 longest and p8=p6> p5; humeral fossae semidouble with deep, trabeculated outer fossa and distinct, if shallow, tricipital fossa, the incisura capitis deep, ventral tubercle protuberant, and pectoral crest not decurrent below fossae; tail rather long and square-tipped, tail/wing ratio (0.70–)0.71–0.74(–0.76), the rectrices 12, slightly flared and broadly rounded at the tips; feet rather slender, with booted tarsi and distinctly broadened toe pads. Nest a thick, coarse cup of interwoven rootlets and tendrils, lined with finer rootlets and tendrils, camouflaged on the outside by loosely but thickly interwoven moss and leafy liverworts, and inserted in the upright fork of a small tree c. 2–3 m above the ground; eggs 1 per clutch, ellipsoid, matt pale to mid buff-cream, rather densely and coarsely freckled and flecked with purple-brown to red-brown, the markings often concentrated in a cap at the larger end. Sluggish, quiet, arboreal, forest-living frugivores (with some insectivory) of lower forest stages ( Coates 1990: 204); apparently monogamous.

Range and composition. Mid montane rainforests of New Guinea; one genus: Rhagologus Stresemann & Paludan, 1934 , of one species: R. leucostigma ( Salvadori, 1876) .

Comment. The description herein of the nest and eggs of Rhagologus leucostigma (n = 10 clutches in ANWC) appears to be the first published. The nests and eggs were collected by indigenous hunters under the direction and supervision of R. Schodde and I.J. Mason in Morobe Province, Papua New Guinea, in 1973 at Wagau in the Herzog Range, 12–18 October (clutches E02248, E02302, E02303, E02304, E02348, E02349 and E02375), and at Mindik in the Rawlinson Range, 30 October–1 November 1973 (clutches E02407, E02423 and E02447). Nests for five of the clutches were kept as well .

Group name. Although unrelated to members of Pachycephalidae , the single species of Rhagologus bears remarkable similarity to them in appearance. Accordingly we suggest False Whistler as the simplest and least disruptive English name for it.