Taxonomy and phylogeny of red-tailed francolins (Genus Peliperdix)

Bibliography: leaves 25-31.The Red-tailed Group of francolins falls within the class Aves, order Galliformes, family Phasianidae and genus Peliperdix. These are small francolins consisting of three putative species (Peliperdix coqui, P. albogularis and P. schlegelii) that are largely allopatric. Two species (P. coqui and P. albogularis) are considered to be polytypic species, but is a large discrepancy in the number of subspecies attributed to P. coqui and P. albogularis. The mitochondrial cytochrome b gene, organismal characters and combined data were used to identify diagnosable taxa, test the monophyly and reconstruct the phylogeny of the Red-tailed Group. Sixteen exemplars of the Red-tailed Group (representing all species and nearly all subspecies currently recognised in the genus Peliperdix) from different geographical localities were studied. Maximum likelihood (cyt b), maximum parsimony (cyt b, organismal, combined) , distance analysis (cyt b) were performed to resolve the phylogenetic relationships among them. The trees obtained from DNA sequence, organismal and combined data were incongruent in respect to the position of some taxa. The monophyly of the Red-tailed Group seems to be well supported, but the identity of, and interrelationships between the subspecies and species are less well resolved. The morphological and combined tree probably reflects the taxon phylogeny better than the tree based on mitochondrial DNA. only. The most remarkable result that is strongly supported by both organismal and combined trees was that they bring clear resolution between P. albogularis and P. schlegelii as two separate species from P. coqui. Due to the short number of DNA sequences obtained, one cannot make a decision as to whether the subspecies should be elevated to species. Finally, it is suggested that more systematic studies must be done based on multiple independent data sets in order to obtain a robust taxonomy and phylogeny for this group