Re: vultures and musophagids

["Matthew Troutman" <m_troutman@hotmail.com>]

<<<Anyway, in regards to Ron's statement that most workers think that 
vulturids are derived ciconiids is not really true.  Yes, Sibley and Alquist 
have presented much molecular evidence and it is generally accepted that 
vulturids are storks, but not everyone is willing to say so.  Cracraft has 
been rather cautious on this in his papers (unlike his grouping of owl in 
falconiforms; other than vulturids in his phylogeny).  Griffiths has 
presented three syringeal characters (taken from a select group of birds) 
that support a vulturid-falconiform clade (one of the characters is found in 
an owl however).  The debate is still open.>>>

<<From what I know about avian phylogeny, the question is whether New World 
and Old World vultures are in fact related to one another in the first 
place. Some authors exclude the latter from all other falconiforms and do 
group them with the storks (there's a scavenging, vulture-like stork, the 
marabou).>>

I should have made this a little more clear.  Griffiths (1994; also included 
is a refutation of S&A's DNA-DNA hybridization data, which is interesting) 
argues that vulturids (the New World vultures), if they are nested in 
Falconiformes, are the most basal members of the group because they lack 
certain syringeal characters found in falconids and accipitrids (including 
ospreys and secretary-birds, which do not differ greatly from classical 
accipitrids in syringeal anatomy) and that Old World vultures are nested 
with Acciptridae, which is really the old phylogeny.  Griffiths evaluated 
the studies of Rea and Ligon that supported the vulturid-stork clade and 
found them to be based on plesiomorphic characters or ill-defined ones.  I 
don't yet buy it, but I think that the whole vulturid-falconiform-stork 
thing is still an open question.

<<Then there's a suggestion that the maverick members of the Falconiformes 
and Strigiformes, hawks (?) and barn owls respectively, share some 
similarities, which might point to a divergence of Falconiformes from a 
Strigiformes + Caprimulgiformes clade.>>

This is mainly Joel Cracraft's tree, which has been reproduced dozens of 
times.  However, Cracraft does not consider strigiforms to be nested close 
to caprimulgiforms (why?  Because "caprimulgiforms are leading toward a 
swift design" (!)) and nests owls at the base of the falconiform tree a step 
above vulturids. *Nobody* accepts this.

Matt Troutman
m_troutman@hotmail.com


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