Conuropsis, Salvadori, 1891

Smith, Brian Tilston, Thom, Gregory & Joseph, Leo, 2024, Revised Evolutionary And Taxonomic Synthesis For Parrots (Order: Psittaciformes) Guided By Phylogenomic Analysis, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2024 (468), pp. 1-87 : 43

Conuropsis

Conuropsis is extinct and comprises only one species, C. carolinensis , the only parrot known solely from North America since European settlement of the continent. It was predominantly green with a bold yellow neck and head but for its orange crown. We confirm the earlier discovery by Kirchman et al. (2012) that C. carolinensis has a close relationship to the Aratinga solstitialis complex. However, we placed it as sister to that group (fig. 9), along with what we recognize as Gymnopsittacus weddellii , a species not sampled in their study. We further agree with Kirchman et al. (2012) in finding that that clade is itself sister to the macaws. Our phylogenomic data further casts doubt that Conuropsis fratercula , a taxon described from a single humerus from a 16 Mya deposit in Nebraska ( Wetmore, 1926), was closely related to C. carolinensis . Conuropsis fratercula is older than the phylogenomic molecular estimate of 7.1 Mya (3–10.1; fig. 9), the divergence of Conuropsis from the ancestor of Gymnopsittacus and Aratinga . This divergence date also encompasses the likely origin of Conuropsis in North America, which is well after the age of C. fratercula . Demographic modeling using whole genome data ( Gelabert et al., 2020) and genome-wide markers of C. carolinensis ( Smith et al., 2021) indicate that that there were not strong signatures of genetic decline prior to its extinction and that it exhibits the typical genetic signatures of population declines and expansion during the Pleistocene in eastern Nearctic birds.