Megascops atricapilla (Temminck 1822)

Black-capped Screech-Owl

corujinha-sapo (Portuguese)

Strix atricapillus Temminck, 1822 (type not examined).

Otus atricapillus (Temminck, 1822): Cory (1918); Peters (1940); Marks et al. (1999); Weick (2006).

Megascops atricapillus (Temminck, 1822): König et al. (1999); König & Weick 2008.

The type locality is referred to simply as “ Brazil ” (Hoek Ostende et al. 1997). This taxon corresponds to Clade F recovered herein, which is distributed in the Atlantic Forest from coastal Bahia, southern Goiás, southeastern Brazil, Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, and Santa Catarina through northeastern Argentina and eastern Paraguay. Strong statistical support for reciprocal monophyly and significant degree of coalescence with respect to all other species in the complex, and high average pairwise uncorrected mtDNA p-distances ranging from 1.5% ( M. alagoensis) to 6.7% ( M. watsonii). Morphologically as variable as the other species in the group, with a cline in body size from north to south, with southernmost individuals being heavier than northern ones, and a north-to-south cline in longsong pace, with southern individuals possessing faster longsongs than northern ones (Fig. 9). Despite this variation, vocally diagnosable from M. usta, M. stangiae and M. alagoensis by significantly faster longsong and shortsong paces (Fig. 9: Tables 6, 8, and 10). Interestingly, the fastest-paced southernmost populations of M. atricapilla are sympatric with Megascops sanctaecatarinae, whose longsong is slower-paced, suggesting another instance of character displacement (See Herzog et al. 2009).