Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶
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Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶
@stervander.com
3.6K followers 470 following 330 posts
Singing evolutionary biologist, ornithologist, insulaphile. PhD. Senior Curator of #Birds @ntlmuseumsscot.bsky.social, Scientific Assoc @nhm-london.bsky.social‬, Assoc Editor Ibis & Ornis Svecica, ~Sequencer AviList. [Views obvs my own; ex-X-@nesospiza]
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Thank you, Matthew! Glad to hear about your experience too.
November 7, 2025 at 4:25 PM
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Ha ha, that'd be pretty cool too. ;-)
October 7, 2025 at 5:44 PM
stervander.com
Exactly!
August 25, 2025 at 8:27 PM
stervander.com
Nope!
August 25, 2025 at 6:57 PM
stervander.com
I am very pleased to note confirm that the application deadline has now been extended to 31 August. We look forward to your applications!
August 22, 2025 at 3:27 PM
stervander.com
I think we might have enough Ravens not to have to incorporate you in the cupboards... 😉
August 13, 2025 at 9:17 AM
stervander.com
Thanks, Steve!
July 3, 2025 at 9:22 PM
stervander.com
Tease no longer, Alan! bsky.app/profile/ster...

I hope that you with your inclinations don't get too disappointed that it is a new family that is no longer around.
stervander.com Martin Stervander 🏳️‍🌈🇸🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏛️🦉🦤🪶 @stervander.com · Jul 3
Welcome a new family of #birds, the Caribbean cave rails, Nesotrochidae! They were—surprisingly—the sisters of NZ adzebills, all sadly extinct. New #OpenAccess paper out in Avian #Systematics w Gerald Mayr, Chen Guangji & Feng Shaohong: www.avespress.com/uploads/down...

🧵

#ornithology #taxonomy 🧪🪶
An artistic rendition of the extinct Antillean Cave Rail, Nesotrochis debooyi Wetmore, 1918. ©Piotr Gryz, with permission.
July 3, 2025 at 7:53 PM
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Finally, I must shout out to the journal Avian Systematics and EiC Trevor Worthy + wizard Steven Gregory. I've learned tons about nomenclature in the revisions and edits and the process has been fast and good.

No fees + Open Access, the journal just moved to www.avespress.com/avian-system....
The cover of Volume 1 of Avian Systematics, now published (continuously) by Aves Press.
July 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM
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I ran this side project for @ntlmuseumsscot.bsky.social & @nhm-london.bsky.social w great collabs: Gerald Mayr (Dr Bones & Rapid-write) and Chen Guangji & Feng Shaohong (of #B10K #Bird10K, saving the day when supposedly public data was not so public).

Special thx to Piotr Gryz for cave rail pic!
Illustrating Bird10K by reusing my old collage of Elementaves bird species, arranged following the classical elements, from bottom to top, of water, earth, air, and fire. All images with CC0 license, unless otherwise stated. Water: Humboldt Penguin (Spheniscus humboldti), Common Loon (Gavia immer). Earth: Indian Nightjar (Caprimulgus asiaticus) [Hari K Patibanda, https://flic.kr/p/2oM6rs3, CC BY-NC 2.0], Tasmanian Nativehen (Tribonyx mortierii). Air: Common Swift (Apus apus), Stripe-tailed Hummingbird (Eupherusa eximia). Fire: Sunbittern (Eurypygia helias) [Jean Ogden, https://flic.kr/p/2puQRv2, CC BY 2.0], White-tailed Tropicbird (Phaethon lepturus).
July 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM
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...so we described Nesotrochidae fam. nov., the cave rail family! They are (were) distinguished by a number of osteological characters, not least that the humerus has a large and ventrally protruding processus flexorius.

Voilá: Nesotrochidae Stervander, Chen, Feng & Mayr, 2025!
Figure 3 of Stervander et al. (2025): https://www.avespress.com/uploads/downloads/212/file/AS_2_8_PDFA.pdf. Here, the one and only Gerald Mayr describes the differences in bone morphology between cave rails, rails, flufftails, and sun grebes (Heliornithidae). Figure caption: Humeri (A‒E, cranial view), tarsometatarsi (F‒H, dorsal view), and hypotarsi (I‒M, proximal view) of the Rallidae (A, F, I), Heliornithidae (B, J), Sarothruridae (C, K), Nesotrochidae, fam. nov. (D, G, L), and Aptornithidae (E, H, M). A, Aramides cajanea (right side); F, I, Aramides saracura (right side); B, J, Heliornis fulica (all left side); C, K, Sarothrura pulchra (C: right side, K: left side); D, G, L, Nesotrochis steganinos (from Olson, 1974: figs. 1 and 2; D: left side, G, L: right side); E, H, M, Aptornis defossor (all right side). Abbreviations: fdl, sulcus/canal for tendon of musculus flexor digitorum longus; fhl, sulcus for tendon of musculus flexor hallucis longus; fp2, sulcus/canal for tendon of musculus flexor perforatus digiti II; fpp2, sulcus/canal for tendon of musculus flexor perforans et perforatus digiti II; flx, processus flexorius. The scale bars equal 10 mm in A‒H and 5 mm in I‒M; the scale bars for N. steganinos are approximate and based on measurements given by Olson (1974).
July 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM
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This fully supported topology presents three options: merge family Aptornithidae (adzebills) with (1) Nesotrochis or (2) that + current family Sarothruridae (flufftails)—or (3) award the cave rails family status as Nesotrochidae.

#1–2 seem unreasonable given the marked distinctness of adzebills...
Artistic rendition of an adzebill from New Zealand, by Nobu Tamura, from https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Aptornis_BW.jpg under CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en). These beasts are markedly different from flufftails and forest rails as well as cave rails.
July 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM
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Dated Bayesian analyses of 9,615 base pairs coding mitochondrial sequence, in 16 partitions w optimised substitution models, didn't result in the unresolved polytomy of Oswald et al. (2021). Neither was Nesotrochis sister with Sarothruridae, but split as sister from Aptornithidae 37 Mya!
Phylogenetic tree from Figure 2 of Stervander et al (2025): /https://www.avespress.com/uploads/downloads/212/file/AS_2_8_PDFA.pdf. Caption: Dated phylogeny based on 9,615 base pairs mitochondrial DNA across Gruiformes, with charadriiform outgroups (in grey). With full posterior probability (PP = 1.0), the Cuban cave rail Nesotrochis steganinos Olson, 1974 is the sister taxon of the adzebill family Aptornithidae Bonaparte, 1856, from which it diverged 36.7 Ma. Their most recent common ancestor diverged from the flufftail family Sarothruridae Verheyen, 1957 at 42.9 Ma. Some key nodes are annotated tip-side of the node with the estimated and the 95% highest posterior density for divergence time. Nodes used for time calibrations are marked with asterisks and the calibration density distributions coloured in peach. All nodes shown have PP = 1.0 except one within Sarothruridae labelled with the PP value in bold italics on the root-side of the node. In the geological time scale, Pli = Pliocene, Ple = Pleistocene. Clade colours correspond to Figure 1 and Oswald et al. (2021). This tree is based on a single BEAST run comprising 100 million generations, with 13% burn-in and mean node heights. For other trees, see Data Availability.
July 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM
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—so we generated new mitogenomes for Madagascar Forest Rail (Mentocrex kioloides) and Forbes's Forest Rail (Rallicula forbesi), neither of them rails, but members of the flufftail family (Sarothruridae)!
Painting by John Gould of the Forbes's Forest Rail (Rallicula forbesi), CC BY 0.
July 3, 2025 at 7:50 PM