Melampittidae, Schoddei & Christidis, 2014

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 : 512-513

Family Melampittidae , familia nova ―melampittas

Type genus: Melampitta Schlegel, 1871

Diagnosis. Small-medium to medium-large, all-black songbirds with long, slender or stout legs, short or rather long tail, and a tuft of short, spike-like feathering with degenerated barbules across the frons; sexes apparently monomorphic except for iris color ( lugubris ), juveniles brown on lower body; head rather narrow, the bill thrush- or corvid-like, all black, maxilla moderately or well-hooked, tomia smooth except for terminal maxillary notch, narial depression elliptic, with inoperculate, holorhinal, internally fully pervious nostrils opening externally in rounded to elliptic apertures distal in narial depression, rictal bristles absent ( lugubris ) or sparse, fine and short ( gigantea ); skull ( lugubris ) with fully perforate interorbital septum except for narrow medial bar, narrow, shortwinged ectethmoids that do not reach the jugal bar, ellipsoid maxillo-palatines, round-tipped vomer, long and narrow palatine shelf with shallowly attenuate transpalatine processes, and small, shallow and ill-defined temporal fossae flanked by atrophied, pimple-like postorbital processes and short, spiny, anteriorly projecting zygomatic processes; sternum ( lugubris ) short and broad, almost square and much broadened distally, with shallow keel ¼ x sternum width, lateral trabeculae medium-long, c. ⅓–½ x length of sternum, abruptly and slightly flared at tips, sternal rostrum very short; wings short and broadly rounded, with distinctively recurved and emarginated primaries with broader trailing vane, primaries 10, with p10 well-developed, p6=p5> p4> p3> p7; humeral fossae ( lugubris ) single, very deep but hardly trabeculated, the incisura capitis moderately deep and developed into a shallow tricipital depression, ventral tubercle squared and protuberant, and pectoral crest atrophied; tail plain, round-tipped, short or moderately long, tail/wing ratio 0.58–0.70 ( lugubris ), 0.80–0.90 ( gigantea ), the rectrices 12 (perhaps 10 in some populations of M. gigantea ), straight-sided without terminal flaring, shallowly acute or spiny at tips; feet large, the tarsi booted, long and slender ( lugubris ) or stout ( gigantea ). Nest a ‘suspended basket of vines’ ( gigantea ) or bulky dome with a side-entrance, of densely interwoven rootlets, tendrils and fronds, lined with a thick cup of fern hairs and scales, camouflaged externally with interwoven green bryophytes, and inserted in the side of a tree-fern trunk or bound among upright fern stems c. 1.5–3 m above the ground ( lugubris ); eggs c. 1 per clutch, chalky white, sparsely marked all over with spots and small blotches of black, grey and purplish-grey, usually concentrated at the larger end, sometimes forming a zone ( lugubris ). Terrestrial, forest-living omnivores, foraging by hopping and running, probing, litter-tossing and digging ( Coates 1990: 418); apparently monogamous.

Range and composition. Hill to montane rainforests of New Guinea; two genera: Melampitta Schlegel, 1871 , of one species: M. lugubris Schlegel, 1871 ; Megalampitta Schodde & Christidis , this work, of one species: M. gigantea (Rothschild, 1899) .

Comment. Relationships between Melampitta lugubris and Megalampitta gigantea are unresolved. M. gigantea is over twice the bulk of M. lugubris , has a much longer tail, proportionally shorter and much stouter feet, and stiffened remiges and rectrices with spiny tips that are accentuated by abrasion; and on the alula is a small bony spur of unknown function ( Diamond 1983). Likely immatures of gigantea (AMNH 5907637 ♂, and Bishop Museum BBM 101808 ♀) are black-hooded and reddish-brown to fuscous ventrally and over the lower back in a pattern reminiscent of adult plumage in the oriolid genus Pitohui . Material of gigantea is nevertheless so limited (6 specimens from different regions of New Guinea) that sexual, age and geographic characteristics of plumage are not yet fully understood. Yet despite this, differences in size, proportions and plumage structure between ‘cinclid’- shaped lugubris and ‘corvid’-like gigantea are sufficient to indicate deep divergence and exploitation of different adaptive zones, a conclusion reinforced by the habit of gigantea of roosting in sinkholes (Diamond l.c.). In syringeal musculature, moreover, the two species appear to differ as much from one another as they do from other corvoid families ( Mayr 1931). Their territorial songs are dissimilar: a descending series of rapid, harsh ‘buzzy’ notes or single sharp chirped whistles repeated at intervals in lugubris ( Beehler et al. 1986; xeno-canto website), and a clear slurred double- or triple-note whistle, rising and falling in pitch and monotonously repeated, in gigantea (Diamond l.c.; xeno-canto website). It leads us to place gigantea in its own genus and suggest that, when better known, it could justify family-group ranking.