Birds in Indonesia: New Species and Supertramps

Way back in the 1970s, leading ornithologists like Dr. Ernst Mayr thought the discovery of bird species was almost complete.  In my 2006 book Shadows of Existence, though, I quoted a South African ornithology, Dr. Phil Hockey. He said, "Ten years or so ago, ornithologists were saying that by now all bird species would be known.  But today new species are popping up all over the place.” They still are.
Now we have two new species from Indonesia. Scientists from universities in Dublin and Sulawesi using "mitochondrial DNA, morphometric, song and plumage analyses" The Wakatobi white-eye and the Wangi-wangi white-eye  come from the Wakatobi Isalnds off the larger island of Sulawesi.  
The formal description includes a term I hadn't heard before: birds living on only one island have long been called "endemics," but the term "supertramps" is used for species that found homes all over the archipelago. I'd missed it: the term apparently dates back to 1974, when it was popularized by Dr. Jared Diamond (a fan of the band Supertramp as well as an ecologist describing a phenomenon)  to mean a generalized species with wide distribution - that is, one colonizes a large area but without specializing enough to form distinct species. (If you think about it, that describes humans very well.)  
Sulawesi is an oddity to begin with, a sort of demilitarized zone where creatures from both sides of the Wallace line separating placental mammals with roots in Asia from the marsupials mingle.   This makes it something of a zoological laboratory for hybrid and new species.  The Wakatobi white-eye is similar to other species on Sulawesi (indeed, it was mistaken for something else until now), while the Wangi-wangi white-eye is a loner, with the closest relative three thousand kilometers (something humans around the holidays can only wish for) And yet, they are allied, both in the genus Zosterops.  This poses both a puzzle and exciting new evidence for scientists trying to play the record revealed through modern species in reverse, so to speak, and understand how birds and other species radiated through this region from the nearest continents. 
The team leader, Dr. Nicola Marples, wrote, “To find two new species from the same genus of birds in the same island is remarkable." And yet here they are, and no one now doubts more birds await the eyes of science.