Order
Passeriformes
Family
Corvidae
Genus
Cyanolyca
 
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Version 1.0

This is a historic version of this account.  Current version

SPECIES

Beautiful Jay Cyanolyca pulchra

Carly E. Hodes
Version: 1.0 — Published April 22, 2010

Systematics

Geographic Variation

Monotypic; there is no described geographic variation. Hellmayr (1934) suggested that Beautiful Jay Cyanolyca pulchra (Lawrence 1876) was conspecific with Azure-hooded Jay Cyanolyca cucullata (Ridgway 1885) of Central America, but this treatment was rejected by Pitelka (1951) and most subsequent authors. A phylogeny of Cyanolyca confirms that pulchra and cucullata are sister species, however (Bonaccorso 2009; see Systematics).

Subspecies

Related Species

Described as Cyanocitta pulchra by Lawrence in 1876. The type locality is "Quito," Ecuador, where the species does not occur; but presumably the type was collected on the nearby western slopes of the Andes in northwestern Ecuador. Placed in the genus Cyanolyca Cabanis 1851 by most later authorities (e.g. Hellmayr 1934, Blake and Vaurie 1962). Hardy (1969), however, divided all New World jays into two lineages, the Ornate Line and the Inornate Line. The Inornate Line contained the species traditionally classified in the genera Aphelocoma and Cyanolyca; Hardy included Cylanolyca within the genus Aphelocoma, although he retained Cyanolyca as a subgenus.

Bonaccorso and Peterson (2007) constructed a phylogeny of New World jays based on a phylogenetic analysis of DNA sequence data from five genes, both mitochondrial and nuclear: complete sequences for NADH Dehydrogenase Subunit 2 (ND2), the Adenylate Kinase gene, intron 5 (AK5) and the ß-Fibrinogen intron 7 (ßfib7); and partial sequences for cytochrome b. Bonaccorso and Peterson found that Cyanolyca was basal to all other New World jays, and was not closely related to Aphelocoma.

The phylogeny of the Cyanolyca jays was investigated in more detail by Bonaccorso (2009), again using both mitochondrial and nuclear DNA sequence data. Cyanolyca is monophyletic, and contains two clades, one of which is endemic to Central America, and the second of which largely is South American. The Beautiful Jay is a member of the South American + Central American clade, together with White-collared Jay (Cyanolyca viridicyanus), Turquoise Jay (C. turcosa), and Black-collared Jay (C. armilatta), all of which are Andean, and with Azure-hooded Jay (C. cucullata) of Central America. Within this clade, pulchra is sister to cucullata, as suggested by Hellmayr (1934; see Geographic Variation).

Recommended Citation

Hodes, C. E. (2010). Beautiful Jay (Cyanolyca pulchra), version 1.0. In Neotropical Birds Online (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/nb.beajay1.01