On the use of integumentary characters in bird phylogeny: the case of Tinamus osgoodi (Palaeognathae: Tinamidae) and plumage character coding

SARA B. BERTELLI; NORBERTO P. GIANNINI

acta zoologica lilloana

Fundación Miguel Lillo

Lugar: San Miguel de Tucumán; Año: 2013 vol. 57 p. 57 - 71

0065-1729

Integumentary characters have rarely been included in SystematicOrnithology in spite of the fact that most characters used to differentiate species are ofplumage, ramphoteca (corneous sheath of the bill and nares) and podoteca (horny scales ofthe legs), and many such characters contribute to higher-order groupings of traditionaldiagnosis. Several recent studies have used integumentary characters in a cladistic context,particularly a comprehensive phylogeny of tinamous that included the 9 genera, all 47currently recognized species, and some distinct subspecies. Here we re-evaluate the positionin that phylogeny of the uniformly dark species Tinamus osgoodi. This forest tinamou wasrecovered in the previous analysis as closely related to species of Crypturellus that alsoexhibited dark plumage coloration. All these species are possibly melanic, or alternatively,exhibit a plumage coloration pattern affecting many pterylae at once. We discuss the nonindependence of some plumage characters of tinamous, and re-analize the integumentary data set by re-coding these characters for the dark species. Using implied-weights forphylogeny reconstruction, we recover most of the expected groupings, including Tinamus osgoodi as one member of its genus. Interestingly this position did not influence the dark Crypturellus species, which could have been affected by the same coding scheme but instead grouped together with their congeners, indicating that interaction with other characters played a crucial role in the recovery of these taxa in their respective genera. Finally, we comment on the usefulness of integumentary characters and the incidence of their coding in Systematic Ornithology.