Description d’une nouvelle espèce de gobemouche sur l’île de Sulawesi (Indonésie)

The Indonesian island of Sulawesi, a globally important hotspot of avian endemism, has been relatively poorly studied ornithologically, to the extent that several new bird species from the region have been described to science only recently, and others have been observed and photographed, but never before collected or named to science. One of these is a new species of Muscicapa flycatcher that has been observed on several occasions since 1997. A team of American and Indonesian ornithologists collected two specimens in Central Sulawesi in 2012, and based on a combination of morphological, vocal and genetic characters, they have described the new species more than 15 years after the first observations. It has been named Sulawesi Streaked Flycatcher  (Muscicapa sodhii). It is superficially similar to the highly migratory, boreal-breeding Gray-streaked Flycatcher Muscicapa griseisticta, which winters in Sulawesi; however, the new species differs strongly from M. griseisticta in several morphological characters, song, and mtDNA. Based on mtDNA, the new species is only distantly related to M. griseisticta, instead being a member of the M. dauurica clade. The new species is evidently widely distributed in lowland and submontane forest throughout Sulawesi. This wide distribution coupled with the species’ apparent tolerance of disturbed habitats suggests it is not currently threatened with extinction. We propose you a synthesis of the official description published the 24th of November on PLOS ONE.