Peltopsinae
Creators: name: Schoddei, Richard
name: Christidis, Les
Publisher: name: Zenodo
Year: 2014
Subjects: Biodiversity
Taxonomy
Animalia
Chordata
Aves
Passeriformes
Oreoicidae

description: Subfamily Peltopsinae, subfamilia nova ―peltopses
Type genus: Peltops Wagler, 1829
Diagnosis. Small, slender songbirds with bulky flycatching bills and black plumage boldly patterned with red on lower back and crissum and white on cheeks and mantle; sexes monomorphic; bill broadened with bulbous culmen, all-black, tomia smooth except for terminal maxillary notch, no narial depression, the nostril amphirhinal, externally elliptic and internally semi-pervious, rictal bristles present but sparse, x ½ length of bill; skull with semiclosed interorbital septum, short-winged ectethmoids that do not reach the jugal bar, heavily ossified palate with expanded maxillo-palatines fusing with an extended bony shelf from the maxillary to almost meet across the roof of the palate in a pseudo-desmognathous configuration, narrow palatine shelf with attenuate transpalatine processes, slender pterygoids fused to the palatine shelf, and small well-defined temporal fossae flanked by short, ventrally projecting postorbital processes and short, doubled, ventrally projecting zygomatic processes; sternum short, little longer than broad and narrowed distally, with shallow keel ⅓ x sternum width, lateral trabeculae medium-long, c. ⅓–½ x length of sternum, abruptly and slightly flared at tips, sternal rostrum reduced and short; wings narrowly rounded, primaries 10 with p10 moderately developed, p7> p8> p6> p5=p9; humeral fossae single with deep, trabeculated outer fossa and rather shallow incisura capitis, ventral tubercle not protuberant, pectoral crest short, not decurrent below fossa; tail rather long, narrow and shallowly emarginate at the tip, tail/ wing ratio (0.72–)0.74–0.78(–0.80), the 12 rectrices slightly flared and broadly acute at tips; feet short, with booted tarsi. Nest a small, compact cup of dry twigs, rootlets and vegetable fiber without green bryophyte camouflaging, inserted in a horizontal fork at the end of outer branches of trees at c. 6–35 m above the ground; eggs c. 1 per clutch, ovoid, pale satin-buff with sparse black-brown spots concentrated at the larger end. Arboreal, forest-living insectivores of mid and upper forest stages, sallying from exposed perches; apparently monogamous.
Range and composition. Lowland and montane rainforests of New Guinea; one genus: Peltops Wagler, 1829, of two species: P. blainvillii (Lesson & Garnot, 1827), lowland New Guinea, and P. montanus Stresemann, 1921, montane New Guinea.
Group name. The Linnaean name Peltops is so widely anglicized as the English group name for this genus (e.g. Beehler et al. 1986; Coates 1990; Dickinson 2003; Russell & Rowley 2009) that we support it over the English name “shieldbill” as used by Gill & Wright (2006) and Beehler et al. (2012).
description: Published as part of Schoddei, Richard & Christidis, Les, 2014, Relicts from Tertiary Australasia: undescribed families and subfamilies of songbirds (Passeriformes) and their zoogeographic signal, pp. 501-522 in Zootaxa 3786 (5) on pages 514-515, DOI: 10.11646/zootaxa.3786.5.1, http://zenodo.org/record/4913561