Maps!

I love maps. And I love making them in arcMap or R. Recently, I made some range maps for the migratory species in the Pitta family (I love pittas, too). To create these, I used data from BirdLife International and a couple of spatial R packages to plot the shapefiles of the species' ranges onto a simple world map.

The breeding, over-wintering, and overall ranges of four migratory Pitta species (African Pitta, Indian Pitta, Blue-winged Pitta, and Fairy Pitta).

There are a few "great speciators" in the Pitta clade, which have radiated throughout the Indo-Pacific region. Erythrogaster erythrogaster (Red-bellied Pitta) is one example of such a superspecies - a recent publication by Irestedt et al. discovered up to 17 different species in the Erythrogaster complex!

Overall range of the Erythrogaster species complex, which appears to have radiated eastward across the Indo-Pacific region in a 'stepping stone' pathway, according to Irestedt et al. (2013).

The Hooded Pitta (Pitta sordida) complex is another example.

Overall range of the sordida complex. Pitta sordida cucullata migrates between its northern breeding range and wintering range (outlined in blue) in peninsular Malaysia and Sumatra.