[Taxacom] kagus, adzebills, and sunbitterns

[Ken Kinman]

Dear All,
     One thing I did like about Livesey and Zusi's phylogeny was 
confirmation that kagus and adzebills do clade together, and that 
sunbitterns are the next closest group.  This certainly means that 
vicariance (gondwana splitting and Antarctica freezing) was the major factor 
in their split distribution.

     However, I am not so sure that kagus have been on New Caledonia (or 
adzebills were in New Zealand) during the early Cenozoic.  More likely that 
the kagu ancestor flew or rafted (from Australia?) to New Caledonia, and at 
a later time the adzebill ancestor flew, rafted (or even walked over a land 
bridge??) from New Caledonia to New Zealand.  So as with tuataras and 
leiopelmatid frogs, I would predict some kagu-sunbittern-like fossils could 
be found in Oligocene-Miocene deposits of Australia.
    -----Cheers,
             Ken Kinman
P.S.  I will still be placing the sunbittern-kagu-adzebill clade in the 
Metaves group, not near the Gruiformes (sensu stricto) of the Coronaves 
group.  Neither will I go back to grouping loons and grebes together; nor 
hoatzins with cuckoos.  Livesey and Zusi need some molecular data to sort 
out those higher-level groupings and avoid the convergence that has long 
plagued ornithology.

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