Probosciger, Kuhl, 1820

Smith, Brian Tilston, Thom, Gregory & Joseph, Leo, 2024, Revised Evolutionary And Taxonomic Synthesis For Parrots (Order: Psittaciformes) Guided By Phylogenomic Analysis, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2024 (468), pp. 1-87 : 19-20

Probosciger

Probosciger is a massive, large-bodied slaty black cockatoo, which is phylogenetically as well as phenotypically distinctive in its permanently open bill, rose-red colored facial skin, colored tongue, slaty black plumage with some fine orange-red ventral barring in young birds and finely plumed erectile but uncolored crest, whistled vocalizations, and drumming behavior in males ( Schodde and Mason, 1997; Heinsohn et al., 2017, 2023).

We have discussed above why we favor placing Probosciger in its own subfamily rather than tribe and we acknowledge ongoing debate about the correct stem for the family-group name to be assigned to this subfamily.

Within Probosciger aterrimus , 3.3% divergence in the control region of the mitochondrial genome corresponds to a geographical split between populations on the Bird’s Head Peninsula at the western end of New Guinea and those in the rest of New Guinea and Australia ( Murphy et al., 2007). A subsequent study using SNP data and the mtDNA gene ND2 found evidence of shallow genetic structuring between Australia and New Guinea ( Keighley et al., 2019).