| Abstract Muscicapinae and Sylviinae are two large subfamilies of Muscicapidae in Passeriformes. There are complex relations among the genera and species of two subfamilies. Studies about the phylogeny and evolution of two subfamilies birds have been based mostly on morphological, acoustical and zoogeographical characters in China, and continued to use the system of Cheng Tso-Hsin. However the system of Sibley and Monroe(1993) have been used in overseas research. Recently, a few molecular studies have been done on the phylogenetic relationships of some birds in Passeriformes, but many taxa of Muscicapinae and Sylviinae are not still clearly identifiable. In China, few birdman focused on the relations between Muscicapinae and Sylviinae, and the relations among Muscicapinae, Sylviinae, Turdinae and Timaliinae using the molecular phylogeny approaches.In this paper, we adopted PCR products direct sequencing technique to sequences fragments of the complete Cyt b gene and the partial COl gene, which from 6 genera 16 species of Muscicapinae and from 12 genera 37 species of Sylviinae. Besides of some sequences from GenBank, all the sequenced fragments were aligned using ClustalX1.83. Sequence statistics were performed using MEGA V2.1. Several statistical approaches were used to test the phylogenetic signal in the DNA sequence data sets. Phylogenetic analyses under the Neighbor Joining (NJ), maximum parsimony (MP) and maximum likelihood (ML) optimal criteria were performed as implemented in PAUP4.0b10 (PPC). Bayesian inference also employed to reconstruct the phylogeny using MrBayes V3.0. From these analyses we drew conclusions as follows:(1) Terpsiphone is not the member of Muscicapinae and placed into Monarchidae. The divergent time between Terpsiphone and other Muscicapinae genera was estimated at occurring 7.0～8.5 Mya.(2) There is a close relation between Rhipidura and Culicicapa. They are also not the members of Muscicapinae and placed into Rhipiduridae.(3) Ficedula, Niltava and Muscicapa are the genera in Muscicapinae, and Muscicapa is the sister-group and a close relative of Niltava clade. Ficedula is not monophyletic. (4) Muscicapa thalassina is closely related to Cyanoptila cyanomelana, and they should be placed in Niltava or be the sister genus to Niltava.(5) Seicercus is closely related to Phylloscopus, and Seicercus is nested within Phylloscopus, rendering the latter genus non-monophyletic. Our results indicate that either Seicercus be synonymized with Phylloscopus, or the complex be split into more than two genera. In the genus of Phylloscopus, there are close relations between P. sichuanensis and P. reguloides, P. magnirostris and P. borealis, P. schwarzi and P. armandii.(6) Regulus is not the member of Sylviinae and suggested be promoted to Regulidae. The divergent time between Regulus and other Sylviinae genera was estimated at occurring 7.2～9.5 Mya.(7) Our results suggest that Acrocephalus is a monophyletic taxon. The phylogenic relations ofAcrocephalus, Phylloscopus, Cettia and Locustella do not be confident.(8) There are close relations among Orthotomus, Cisticola and Prinia, and our results suggest that they are placed into Cisticolidae.(9) There are close relations among Cettia, Tesia and Abroscopus, and they should be placed into the same family or subfamily. Our results indicate that these genera are not placed into Acrocephlinae.(10) Bradypterus is closely related to Locustella, so both of them should be placed into the same taxon.(11) About the phylogenetic relationships among four subfamilies, our results suggest that Muscicapinae is closely related to Turdinae and is sister to the latter. Both of them are placed into Muscicapoidea. There are close relations between Sylviinae and Timaliinae. Garrulax and Paradoxornis of Timaliinae are nested within the genera of Sylviinae. So Sylviinae and Timaliinae are placed into Sylvioidea. Furthermore, our results indicate that Rhipidura, Culicicapa are closely related to Sylviinae, and Rhipiduridae is sister to Sylvioidea.(12) Zosteropidae is closely related to Garrulax, Paradoxornis, Sylvia, and there are closer relation between Zosteropidae and Garrulax, between Paradoxornis and Sylvia. |
