Peltopsinae

Schoddei, Richard & Christidis, Les, 2014, Relicts from Tertiary Australasia: undescribed families and subfamilies of songbirds (Passeriformes) and their zoogeographic signal, Zootaxa 3786 (5), pp. 501-522 : 514-515

Subfamily Peltopsinae , subfamilia nova ―peltopses

Type genus: Peltops Wagler, 1829

Diagnosis. Small, slender songbirds with bulky flycatching bills and black plumage boldly patterned with red on lower back and crissum and white on cheeks and mantle; sexes monomorphic; bill broadened with bulbous culmen, all-black, tomia smooth except for terminal maxillary notch, no narial depression, the nostril amphirhinal, externally elliptic and internally semi-pervious, rictal bristles present but sparse, x ½ length of bill; skull with semiclosed interorbital septum, short-winged ectethmoids that do not reach the jugal bar, heavily ossified palate with expanded maxillo-palatines fusing with an extended bony shelf from the maxillary to almost meet across the roof of the palate in a pseudo-desmognathous configuration, narrow palatine shelf with attenuate transpalatine processes, slender pterygoids fused to the palatine shelf, and small well-defined temporal fossae flanked by short, ventrally projecting postorbital processes and short, doubled, ventrally projecting zygomatic processes; sternum short, little longer than broad and narrowed distally, with shallow keel ⅓ x sternum width, lateral trabeculae medium-long, c. ⅓–½ x length of sternum, abruptly and slightly flared at tips, sternal rostrum reduced and short; wings narrowly rounded, primaries 10 with p10 moderately developed, p7> p8> p6> p5=p9; humeral fossae single with deep, trabeculated outer fossa and rather shallow incisura capitis, ventral tubercle not protuberant, pectoral crest short, not decurrent below fossa; tail rather long, narrow and shallowly emarginate at the tip, tail/ wing ratio (0.72–)0.74–0.78(–0.80), the 12 rectrices slightly flared and broadly acute at tips; feet short, with booted tarsi. Nest a small, compact cup of dry twigs, rootlets and vegetable fiber without green bryophyte camouflaging, inserted in a horizontal fork at the end of outer branches of trees at c. 6–35 m above the ground; eggs c. 1 per clutch, ovoid, pale satin-buff with sparse black-brown spots concentrated at the larger end. Arboreal, forest-living insectivores of mid and upper forest stages, sallying from exposed perches; apparently monogamous.

Range and composition. Lowland and montane rainforests of New Guinea; one genus: Peltops Wagler, 1829 , of two species: P. blainvillii (Lesson & Garnot, 1827) , lowland New Guinea, and P. montanus Stresemann, 1921 , montane New Guinea.

Group name. The Linnaean name Peltops is so widely anglicized as the English group name for this genus (e.g. Beehler et al. 1986; Coates 1990; Dickinson 2003; Russell & Rowley 2009) that we support it over the English name “shieldbill” as used by Gill & Wright (2006) and Beehler et al. (2012).