Syrmaticus

The genus Syrmaticus contains the five species of long-tailed pheasants. The males have short spurs and usually red facial wattles, but otherwise differ wildly in appearance. The hens (females) and chicks of all the species have a rather conservative and plesiomorphic drab brown color pattern.

5 species are generally accepted in this genus.

Systematics and taxonomy

The genus is occasionally included in Phasianus based on DNA sequence data, but this does not seem well warranted; the molecular evolution in this genus has been unusual and can easily mislead molecular phylogenetic studies and makes molecular clocks unreliable. At least in the cytochrome b sequence transitions have outnumbered transversions to an extent rarely seen in other birds. Transition-transversion frequencies in mtDNA control region are by contrast more like those usually seen in birds, but this region of the mitochondrial genome has been evolving unusually slowly in Syrmaticus.

Still, the phylogeny and evolution of the long-tailed pheasants can be considered resolved to satisfaction by now. It was long accepted that the three southeastern species—which all have bright white wing-bands of a type not found in any close relative and differ little except in the amount and concentration of eumelanins in their plumage—form a clade. However, the two others are not as closely related to each other as was previously thought, representing two lineages that diverged independently from the main lineage instead of being sister species.