Relicts from Tertiary Australasia: undescribed families and subfamilies of songbirds (Passeriformes) and their zoogeographic signal
Author
Schoddei, Richard
Author
Christidis, Les
text
Zootaxa
2014
2014-04-14
3786
5
501
522
journal article
5634
10.11646/zootaxa.3786.5.1
cdd39956-de72-43ea-afa3-cf79f805dd83
1175-5326
4913561
D2764982-F7D7-4922-BF3F-8314FE9FD869
Subfamily
Pachycareinae
,
subfamilia nova
―goldenfaces
Type
genus:
Pachycare
Gould, 1876
Diagnosis.
Small, short-tailed, slender-bodied and brightly-colored songbirds with rich grey dorsum and goldenyellow face and ventrum;
sexes
similar except for grey cheek patch in females;
head
rather narrow, the
bill
Gerygone
-like, uncompressed, tomia smooth except for terminal maxillary notch, and narial depression roundelliptic, with semi-operculate, holorhinal and internally fully pervious nostrils opening externally in distal elliptic apertures under operculum, rictal bristles fine and sparse;
skull
with fully perforate interorbital septum, narrowlywinged ectethmoids slightly flattened with club-like tips against the jugal bar, broadly linguate maxillo-palatines rather expanded towards the tips, linguate vomer with vestigial horns, rather narrow palatine shelf with acute transpalatine processes, and upright-oblong, well-defined temporal fossae with terete, ventrally-projecting postorbital processes that are longer than the short, acute anteriorly-projecting zygomatic processes;
sternum
with lateral trabeculae short, broadly-flattened and expanded moderately at tips,
c
. ⅓ x length of sternum, no other data;
wings
short and rounded, primaries 10 with p10 short, p7 and p6 longest, and p8=p5;
humeral fossae
pseudodouble, the outer fossa an untrabeculated cup, the
incisura capitis
deep, extending into a shallow inner tricipital fossa, ventral tubercle protuberant, and pectoral crest short, hardly decurrent below fossae;
tail
short and roundtipped with dull, narrow black subterminal bar through outer rectrices, tail/wing ratio (0.58–)0.60–0.63(–0.65), the rectrices 12, straight-sided without terminal flaring, shallowly acute at tips;
feet
short but stout, with booted tarsi, basal toe pads slightly enlarged.
Nest
a bulky dome with hooded side-entrance, of twigs (base) and grass fibers (body), lined with finer grass fiber and fern rootlets, and placed on the ground in the shelter of rocks or small tree buttresses;
eggs
2–3 per clutch, broadly ovoid, matt- to satin-white with a sparse sprinkling of fine red-brown speckles concentrated in a zone or cap at the larger end. Arboreal, forest-living insectivores, gleaning actively among foliage and branchlets; posture horizontal (
Coates 1990: 206
); apparently monogamous.
Range and composition.
Lower montane rainforests of New
Guinea
; one genus:
Pachycare
Gould, 1876
, of one species:
P. flavogriseum
(A.B. Meyer, 1874)
.