Pipile
| Piping guans | |
|---|---|
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| A blue-throated piping guan | |
| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Order: | Galliformes |
| Family: | Cracidae |
| Genus: |
Pipile Bonaparte, 1856 |
| Species | |
Pipile cujubi
Pipile cumanensis
Pipile jacutinga
Pipile pipile
The piping guans are a bird genus, Pipile, in the Cracidae family. A recent study (Grau et al. 2005), evaluating mtDNA, osteology and biogeography data (Grau et al., 2005) concluding that the wattled guan belongs in the same genus as these and is a hypermelanistic piping guan. Thus, Pipile became a junior synonym of Aburria, though this conclusion was not accepted by the South American Checklist Committee (Remsen et al., 2007), or evaluated by the IOC, so the classification remains in Pipile.
The same results also showed that the light-faced taxa pipile, cumanensis and cujubi are not, as was sometimes suggested, conspecific. However, free interbreeding between A. cujubi and A. cumanensis grayi in eastern Bolivia, creating a "hybrid swarm", casts doubt on this conclusion for the two species named (Remsen et al., 2007, citing del Hoyo and Motis, 2004).
It was possible to confidently resolve that the white-faced species form a clade, whereas the more basal black-faced forms are of less certain relationship. Possibly, the black-fronted piping guan is the basalmost taxon, but the placement of the wattled guan in regard to its congeners is not all too well resolved. Blue wattles evolved only once, in a lineage which seems to have originated north of the Amazon River. The piping guans' radiation began in the latter half of the Early Pliocene, roughly 4-3.5 mya. The white-faced lineage emerged around 3 mya and its present diversity began to evolve around the Pliocene- boundary, when the ancestors of the red-throated piping guan and the blue-wattled taxa split. Due to not being calibrated by material evidence such as fossils, the divergence times cannot be estimated with a high confidence (Grau et al. 2005).
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