Platycercini, Selby, 1836

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 : 58-59

Platycercini

The broad-tailed parrots ( Platycercini ) consist of nine genera and 38 extant species distributed across Australasia. The clade includes the radiation of rosellas ( Platycercus ) in Australia and Cyanoramphus ( New Zealand and islands of the South Pacific). The seven other genera contain up to a maximum of four species. Four of these genera are monotypic, i.e., Purpureicephalus , Lathamus , Psephotus , and Clarkona , the last-named here reinstated (see below). There are also four species in Cyanoramphus that went extinct upon European colonization of their islands, and Psephotellus pulcherrimus of Australia is extinct. There are two well-supported subclades in Platycercini that are repeatedly inferred across different studies, datasets, and phylogenetic methods. Intergeneric relationships are also resolved and stable. One clade comprises Barnardius , Platycercus , Purpureicephalus , Psephotus , Psephotellus , Clarkona , and Northiella (figs. 1, 11). Barnardius and Platycercus are closely related, which reflects some authors uniting them in Platycercus (e.g., Johnstone and Storr, 1998), but they diverged at 10.5 Mya (4.7–14.7) and we support retention of both (figs. 1, 11). The nonmonophyly of Psephotus sensu lato ( Joseph et al., 2011) was corroborated with phylogenomic data, the type species Psephotus haematonotus not sharing a most recent common ancestor with the four species comprising Clarkona and Psephotellus . Phylogenetically between these genera are ditypic Northiella and monotypic Purpureicephalus . The other major subclade within the Platycercini ( Lathamus , Prosopeia , Eunymphicus , Cyanoramphus ) is more widely distributed, ranging from Australia, New Caledonia, Fiji, New Zealand, and various small islands in the South Pacific. As with previous phylogenetic work, the migratory and critically endangered Lathamus discolor was sister to Prosopeia , Eunymphicus , and Cyanoramphus (figs. 1, 11). In turn Prosopeia , which is restricted to Fiji, was sister to Eunymphicus of New Caledonia and the Loyalty Islands and Cyanoramphus . This suggests a key role for a propensity for long-distance movement in the evolution of this clade (see Joseph et al., 2011).

Our concatenated tree was concordant with previous phylogenies ( Boon et al., 2008; Joseph et al., 2011) showing that Eunymphicus and Cyanoramphus are sister lineages, and that Prosopeia was sister to both. Some of the species trees had Cyanoramphus and Prosopeia as sister with strong support. However, interpreting the robustness of this alternative relationship will require new genetic data because the Eunymphicus samples were dropped in the most stringent data-retention filter.