bioRxiv preprint doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/329243; this version posted May 23, 2018. The copyright holder for this preprint (which was not certified by peer review) is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under aCC-BY 4.0 International license. 1 Short title: Taxonomy, phylogeny and biogeography of African spurfowls 2 3 Taxonomy, phylogeny and biogeography of African spurfowls 4 (Galliformes, Phasianidae, Coturnicinae, Pternistis spp.) 5 6 Tshifhiwa G. Mandiwana-Neudani1, Robin M. Little2, Timothy M. Crowe2* and Rauri C.K. 7 Bowie2,3 8 9 1 Department of Biodiversity, University of Limpopo, Private Bag X1106, Sovenga 0727, South Africa 10 2 FitzPatrick Institute of African Ornithology DST-NRF Centre of Excellence, Department of 11 Biological Sciences, University of Cape Town, Private Bag X3, Rondebosch 7701, South Africa 12 3 Museum of Vertebrate Zoology and Department of Integrative Biology, 3101 Valley Life Science 13 Building, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-3160, USA 14 15 *Corresponding author E-mail:
[email protected] (TMC) 16 17 Abstract 18 During much of the 20th Century, partridge/quail-like, Afro-Asian phasianine birds referred to 19 commonly as African spurfowls, francolins and/or partridges had a tortuous taxonomic history. Because 20 of striking autapomorphic differences in plumage, vocalizations and ecology in some of these taxa, as 21 many as nine genera and nearly 200 clinal and/or idiosyncratic subspecies, embedded within a 22 polyphyletic Perdicinae, were recognized. In 1963, two clades, 28 ‘francolin’ and ‘spurfowl’ species 23 (fisante in Afrikaans) and 13 Afro-Asiatic ‘francolins’ and ‘partridges’ (patryse in Afrikaans), were 24 combined into a single genus (Francolinus) – the largest within the Galliformes – comprising about 100 25 subspecies.