Rapid diversification and secondary sympatry in Australo-Pacific kingfishers

Abstract

Todiramphus chlorisis the most widely distributed of the Pacific’s ‘great speciators’. Its 50 subspecies constitute a species complex that is distributed over 16 000km from the Red Sea to Polynesia. We present, to our knowledge, the first comprehensive molecular phylogeny of this enigmatic radiation of kingfishers. Ten Pacific Todiramphusspecies are embedded within theT. chloriscomplex, rendering it paraphyletic.