Broad-billed Sapayoa

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iBroad-billed Sapayoa

Scientific classification

Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Aves
Order:	Passeriformes
Family:	Eurylaimidae
Genus:	Sapayoa Hartert, 1903
Species:	S. aenigma

Binomial name

Sapayoa aenigma
Hartert, 1903

The Broad-billed Sapayoa (or simply Sapayoa) Sapayoa aenigma is a suboscine passerine found in lowland rainforests in Panama and northwest South America. It is a rare to uncommon species of the forest understory, favouring ravines and small streams.

As the Sapayoa's epithet aenigma implies, its taxonomy is problematic. It was historically regarded as a New World suboscine; in particular, it was assigned to the manakin family, Pipridae. However, the species was listed as incertae sedis (position uncertain) by Sibley and Ahlquist (1990), because "preliminary DNA-DNA hybridization comparisons ... indicate that this species is either a relative of the Old World Eurylaimidae or a sister group of all other Tyrannida, as suggested by earlier biochemical studies... In any event, it is not a close relative of manakins or any other recent tyrannoid".^[1] It has been suggested that the Sapayoa should be placed in its own monotypic family "Sapayoidae".

More recent research suggests that it is not a New World suboscine at all, but an Old World suboscine. Chesser (2004) shows that the Sapoyoa is an outlier to the New World suboscines.^[2] Fjeldså et al. (2003) go further; according to them, "base sequencing of two nuclear genes places it as a deep branch in the group of broadbills and pittas of the Old World tropics."^[3] Thus the Sapayoa would be the last surviving New World species of a lineage that evolved in Australia-New Guinea when Gondwana was in the process of splitting apart. The Sapayoa's ancestors are hypothesized to have reached South America via the Western Antarctica Peninsula.

Based on the accumulating evidence described above, a trend to place the Sapoyoa in the family Eurylaimidae with the broadbills, rather than in its own family, is emerging. One version of this theory places the Sapayoa in the asity family (Philepittidae),^[4] otherwise found only in Madagascar and sometimes considered part of the broadbill family.

[edit] References

BirdLife International (2004). Sapayoa aenigma. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern

↑ C. G. Sibley and J. Ahlquist (1990). Phylogeny and classification of birds. Yale University Press, New Haven, Conn.. ISBN 0-300-04085-7.
↑ Jon Fjeldså, Dario Zuccon, Martin Irestedt, Ulf S. Johansson, Per G. P. Ericson (2003). "Sapayoa aenigma: a New World representative of 'Old World suboscines'". Proceedings of the Royal Society of London: Biological Sciences 270: 238–241.
↑ R. T. Chesser (2004). "Molecular systematics of New World suboscine birds". Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 32: 11-24.
↑ Alan Kemp and Greg H. Sherley (2003). “Asities”, in Christopher Perrins (Ed.): Firefly Encyclopedia of Birds. Firefly Books, 421. ISBN 1-55297-777-3. It's not clear whether Kemp and Sherley or Perrins decided to include the Broad-billed Sapayoa in the Philepittidae.