Ashy-faced Owl? Glaucops complex... (1 Viewer)

I love Raffaele's book. I want to go back to the West Indies RIGHT NOW just because I'm flipping through it's pages.

Anyway, onto my taxonomy question. As I was yearningly staring at the owl page (100-1), I noticed the Hispaniola endemic Ashy-faced Owl; Tyto glaucops. My AOU list shows it too, but on Clements it's nowhere to be found. Is this species not universally accepted? And if not, is the glaucops complex (when, like in Clements, not listed as a Barn Owl sub-species) sometimes categorized within pratincola?

overworkedirish said:

I love Raffaele's book. I want to go back to the West Indies RIGHT NOW just because I'm flipping through it's pages.

Anyway, onto my taxonomy question. As I was yearningly staring at the owl page (100-1), I noticed the Hispaniola endemic Ashy-faced Owl; Tyto glaucops. My AOU list shows it too, but on Clements it's nowhere to be found. Is this species not universally accepted? And if not, is the glaucops complex (when, like in Clements, not listed as a Barn Owl sub-species) sometimes categorized within pratincola?

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Hi Alex,

I'm not sure if I get the gist of your question. you say in Clements it is nowhere to be found, and then you say that it is not listed as a race of Tyto alba. So, I will cut to the chase. The Clements 5° Ed. does indeed list Ashy-faced Owl, Tyto glaucops with races glaucops, nigrescens, and insularis on P. 163. The Howard & Moore list only monotypic Tyto glaucops. The uncertainty and therefore the non-listing by some as a separate species of glaucops rests on the question of race associations. It is pretty universally accepted even by those not listing as a separate species that glaucops is a good species, but they trip on whether or not nigrescens and insularis should be associated with glaucops as a three race species, or if insularis and nigrescens should remain with alba and only splitting glaucops. This is another case in which the Tyto alba complex has to be fine-tuned as it were.

Ah!! :hippy: :gn: :hippy: Someone, please hit me over the head with a shovel - how could I have missed that. My mistake, Steve! I just found it (I have an excel file version of Clements). Sorry to bother. Interesting stuff about nigrescens and insularis though.

Alex,
No problem. Your list will only be good for about another month however. The Clements 6° Ed. should be out late February or March sometime. I may encode the whole thing into Excel including the races, but I may be able to find the time to do it only in late Summer, if at all. When I encoded the Howard & Moore it took me a month of evenings to do it.

Where do the nigrescens and insularis forms live ? (still too much of a luddite to work out how to turn words into italics I'm afraid !)

Larry,

nigrescens = Dominica
insularis = S Lesser Antilles (St. Vincent, Bequia, Union, Carriacou, and Grenada)

P.S. How's the textile industry? 8-P

cuckooroller said:

Larry,

nigrescens = Dominica
insularis = S Lesser Antilles (St. Vincent, Bequia, Union, Carriacou, and Grenada)

P.S. How's the textile industry? 8-P

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Thanks again oh Leptosomatidious one. I was kind of hoping you were going to say Cuba for one of them though,as at least I've heard that one !

For Cuba, Cayman Is., Jamaica I have race furcata of alba, also niveicauda of alba on Isle of Pines. Race pratincola of alba gets also to Bermuda, Bahamas, and Hispaniola (but I wonder why not also as winter visitor to Cuba). There was also an extinct race on Puerto Rico commonly thought to have been related to Tyto glaucops, i.e. race cavatica.

We discussed Tyto species in another thread, and I would like to repeat here that the New World parts of Tyto alba in all likelyhood do not belong together with other T.alba: at the DNA level, T.a.pratincola is 3-4 times more different from T.a.alba than it is from T.glaucops, the Ashy-faced Owl.

To my ears, the nigriscens and insularis races sound quite similar, but I dont have recordings and I therefore cannot make a sonogram which might show hidded differences. Insularis sounds different from the one recording I have of a US bird (I don't know which subspecies, but pratincola seems likely?). I don't have a recording of T.glaucops.

Cheers
Niels (who lives where an insularis often flies over)

Hi Niels (who lives where nigrescens often flies over),

If you know of any links talking about the variance of pratincola, would appreciate them. Unfortunately, the Koenig book went out of print and I can't find a copy for decent money.

cuckooroller said:

Hi Niels (who lives where nigrescens often flies over),

If you know of any links talking about the variance of pratincola, would appreciate them. Unfortunately, the Koenig book went out of print and I can't find a copy for decent money.

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You are right about me mixing nigrescens with insularis for a second <embarrased>

I agree the the Koenig book was very expensive, but I bought it anyway. They analysed 20 T.alba from Europe and S Africa, and found up to 2% divergence between these. Then for the rest a quote: "T.a. glaucops from Hispanola in the Caribbean has been separated as a distinct species since T. glaucops and T. alba are sympatric and do not interbreed (Sibley and Monroe 1990, Hume 1991). The sequence divergence of 8% (table 1) definitely supports the treatment of T. glaucops as a distinct species. T.a. pratincola, which also lives in the West Indies, is clearly distinct from T.alba (8% sequence divergence) but less so from T. Glaucops (1.7%) so might or might not merit species status, and if retained as a subspecies it presumably should be a subspecies of T.glaucops. Since Barn Owls have been introduced to many countries of the world by european settlers, the genetic make-up of local populations can be influenced by hybridization between native and introduced birds."

One problem I have with the above text (now that I have read the text again) is that T.a.pratincola is the other species also present on Hispanola according to the species account given later in the book, so we already know that T.glaucops and T.?.pratincola are not the same species: they don't interbreed. Therefore, the thing about pratincola being a subspecies of glaucops seems irrelevant. Pratincola should be the subspecies "from British Columbia to Florida and to E. Guatemala and E. Nicaragua, also locally in the Caribbean (e.g., Hispanola)."

Further support for T. alba being polytypic is given in Handbook of Birds of the World. Quote: "Interestingly, birds from both the North American race pratincola and the Australian race delicatula were introduced to Lord Howe Island, off North-eastern Australia, and declined to interbreed; this was taken as evidence that the two taxa should not be considered to belong to the same species. However, further investigation was cut short as both forms went extinct on the island."

Cheers
Niels

Wow! Even though I started this thread through a slip-up, I'm so glad it happened! Thanks for keeping me interested, guys!

Just for the pure joy of further roiling the already muddy waters surrounding the Tyto in the Caribbean. The third alternative to be looked into regarding Tyto glaucops and the races insularis and nigrescens, is that there are those that would split glaucops as a monotypic species, and also split insularis and nigrescens as a bitypic species with insularis becoming the nominate. So, as can be seen, for the moment, we are pretty much up s**t creek without a paddle on all of these forms.

cuckooroller said:

So, as can be seen, for the moment, we are pretty much up s**t creek without a paddle on all of these forms.

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So raising the question of the short-eared owl in the Carribean would just lead to more confusion, huh? 8-P

Jeff hopkins said:

So raising the question of the short-eared owl in the Carribean would just lead to more confusion, huh? 8-P

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and whilst we've got the carribean owl chaps in the same place anyone know anything about the newton subspecies of puerto rican screech owl being extant on Guana island?

Jeff hopkins said:

So raising the question of the short-eared owl in the Carribean would just lead to more confusion, huh? 8-P

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Hi Jeff,
Not really. Not too much information really and so I will hazard a guess. Probably originally described by someone (Statius Muller apparently), but I don't have good refs. for it, as a specific entity different than A. flammeus. I know that it has been considered in the past (but when?) as Antillean Short-eared Owl, with either two races, the nominate (i.e., domingensis) and portoricensis, or with race portoricensis submerged within the nominate. Then, someone (don't know who) did some work (but don't know what work) and found that it does not differ enough to warrant separation from flammeus. Since then races domingensis and portoricensis are treated as part of flammeus, and apparently without controversy.

Isurus said:

and whilst we've got the carribean owl chaps in the same place anyone know anything about the newton subspecies of puerto rican screech owl being extant on Guana island?

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Hi Isurus,
The validity of the taxon newtoni has long been under suspicion. In any case, it will remain a dead letter. The only description that can be used for this Owl, whatever it was, is now, and unfortunately, extinct...

cuckooroller said:

Hi Jeff,
Not really. Not too much information really and so I will hazard a guess. Probably originally described by someone (Statius Muller apparently), but I don't have good refs. for it, as a specific entity different than A. flammeus. I know that it has been considered in the past (but when?) as Antillean Short-eared Owl, with either two races, the nominate (i.e., domingensis) and portoricensis, or with race portoricensis submerged within the nominate. Then, someone (don't know who) did some work (but don't know what work) and found that it does not differ enough to warrant separation from flammeus. Since then races domingensis and portoricensis are treated as part of flammeus, and apparently without controversy.

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Interesting. I hadn't heard the last part.

I've also heard them referred to as Arawak (short-eared) owl. I've seen one in the Dry Tortugas. They really are quite striking and a much more golden color than the birds I've seen here in the NE US.

Fascinating stuff folks, would love to hear some references where I could read more about this.
Thanks in advance.
H

The Koenig book treats the domingensis as discussed above, but mention that it has a size 12% smaller than nominate. They have not themselves included this taxon in the DNA work they report, only birds from Germany/Austria and one from Israel included in their work. They treat puertoricensis as a synonym.

For references, I have given some data from the Koenig book, which is this one: http://www.amazon.com/Owls-Guide-Wo...ef=sr_1_1/102-0761805-5578534?ie=UTF8&s=books

As you will see it is unavailable, except possibly second hand. A new version have been promised, and a CD with voices of all the owls of the world was also to be produced, but I have no current knowledge as to when either will actually be available.

Handbook of birds of the world has also been mentioned, http://www.hbw.com/.

About newtoni http://elibrary.unm.edu/sora/JFO/v069n04/p0557-p0562.pdf

I noticed that domingensis was described as occurring in S Florida on post-breeding dispersal and that is was noted as being increasingly common in Cuba.

Other references anyone?

Niels