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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 107(3)

Mitochondrial-DNA evidence shows the Australian Painted Snipe is a full species, Rostratula australis

Allan J. Baker A , S. L. Pereira A , Danny I. Rogers B D , Rebecca Elbourne A and Chris J. Hassell C
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Department of Natural History, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, ON, Canada.

B 340 Ninks Rd, St Andrews, Vic. 3761, Australia.

C PO Box 3089, Broome, WA 6725, Australia.

D Corresponding author. Email: drogers@melbpc.org.au

Emu 107(3) 185-189 https://doi.org/10.1071/MU07024
Submitted: 27 April 2007  Accepted: 15 June 2007   Published: 31 August 2007

Abstract

Despite its distinctive morphology, the taxonomy of the Australian Painted Snipe has been unsettled, with some authors treating it as a full species, Rostratula australis (Gould 1838), and others treating it as a subspecies of the Greater Painted Snipe, Rostratula benghalensis. We sequenced the DNA of five mitochondrial genes (Cyt b, ND5, ATP 6–8, COIII and COI) of Australian Painted Snipe, Greater Painted Snipe and South American Painted Snipe, Nycticryphes semicollaris. The sequences of Australian Painted Snipe were 10% different from those of Greater Painted Snipe from Africa and South-east Asia, which differed from one another by only 2%. Plumage and anatomical characters can also distinguish the Australian and the Greater Painted Snipes. Our results clearly indicate that the Australian Painted Snipe is a distinct species that diverged ~19 million years ago (mya) (95% credible interval 13.0, 27.4 mya).


Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the catching team that obtained the vital blood samples from north-western Australia: Dan and Wendy Blunt, John Curran, Jan Lewis, Liz Rosenberg and George Swann. We thank Roz Jessop for organising the permits needed to send the samples to Canada for analysis. We also appreciate the work of the Threatened Bird Network volunteers who continue to assist us searching for this species in the field. Deoxyribonucleic acid sequencing was funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada grants to AJB and the Canadian Barcode of Life Network. We also thank two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.


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