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AOU 2017 Checklist proposals (1 Viewer)

Also people were uncomfortable with the degree of morphological and genetic differentiation between the two forms compared to other shorebirds.

I think my issue with these votes is that those reasonings could probably apply to Hen Harrier vs Northern Harrier, which also really overall doesn't have a lot of data, and certainly Redpoll which don't seem to have much consistent differentiation.

It should also be stated however that among the comments, many were sparse and some were curious, if not confusing. I found it disturbing that one of the committee wrote that there was a "lack of definitive phenotypic separation" while nearly every other commenter who provided explanation mentioned the morphological differences (true of both the Yes and No votes). Another committee member listed for comparison a series of shorebird species pairs which differ in flight call - including Spotted/Common Sandpipers, dowitchers, and tattlers (the only Tringa of the bunch), while failing to note how similar the calls of Marsh Sandpiper and Lesser Yellowlegs are. I probably need to do some research to discern why flight calls are so critical to shorebird taxonomy.

The way I saw it, only two out of five "NO" commenters provided substantial explanation, and they wanted more data - especially vocal data (and genetic data seems less important to these). The majority of the objections, however, are indecipherable as to their reasoning.

And to be fair, some of the "Yes" votes are pretty sparse with the commentary as well.
 
I think my issue with these votes is that those reasonings could probably apply to Hen Harrier vs Northern Harrier, which also really overall doesn't have a lot of data.

Presumably they took the attached paper into account? Agreed the sample sizes are small, but....
MJB
 

Attachments

  • ++2016 Etherington & Mobley Hen & Northern Harriers.pdf
    1.4 MB · Views: 103
On Willets, we should all remember that an ability of advanced birders to identify individuals does not make them species. It sounds from the AOU commentaries, if they are accurate, as if biometric differences are just "average differences" i.e. overlapping, non-diagnostic. Vocal differences are tentative and only in the most "plastic" and "capable of being learned" of all variables - acoustic frequency of song - and were not subject to rigorous analysis or playback studies anyway. With vocal differences alone, you need to show support in terms of those differences being equal to or greater than those between good sympatric species. I thought the AOU were being careful and fairly reasonably cautious on this. Hopefully someone can do a more in depth study on differentiation between these birds. It is not as if they are rare or difficult to find to study, or like there are not enough sound recordings available.

What surprised me most was the voting in the green Toucanets proposal comments - unless you consider the politics. In contrast to Willets, but consistent with other instances of conflicted AOU shenanigans, an AOU committee member wrote the paper and proposal on Toucanets. So despite the poor support for the proposal in reality, it got opprobrium from many committee members. Winker showed some biometric differences and nothing more. Apparently, that is good enough for most to accept the proposals. But some of the most distinctive plumage types hybridise with one another and morphological differences are generally irrelevant to speciation in the Toucans, as shown by several previous, very detailed studies going back to Haffer. For these toucanets, vocal differences do not come close to those between sympatric toucans. One of the dissenting (no) voters set out in great detail why accepting this proposal makes no sense whatsoever, but it is unclear others read or agreed with those comments. (P.S. I'm not sure if this one or parts of it passed, given the voting data presented.)
 
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While not published online yet, at least Rick Wright has seen the results

http://birdaz.com/blog/2017/07/01/the-fifty-eighth-supplement-to-the-aou-check-list/

I have to say I am perplexed quite a bit at some of the results. Thayers is lumped...understandable. Brown Creeper, Bell's Vireo, and Nashville splits not going through...not surprising.

But Yellow-rumped Warbler and Willet proposals failing to pass, while redpolls continue to be maintained as three species and the Cassia Crossbill gets split? that does not compute at ALL for me.


It "almost" makes more sense when you notice that the comments betray that at least two of the Committee members have an interpretation of the Biological Species Concept that is a bit extreme. Some of the comments for the Yellow-rumped Warbler, for instance, seem to convey a disbelief of any importance to postzygotic isolation mechanisms, which I take to be a low minority opinion among taxonomists. Even small degrees of integration seem to be a problem - one member complains of the Scrub-Jay split. With the Willet vote and the lone dissenter in the Rivoli's/Admirable Hummer split, the issue is that, well they "might" interbreed except for the long disjunction in range. One commenter put considerable effort into showing that the Brown Creepers maybe, possibly, could have gene integration or at least are not proven not to have it. The harrier comments seem to be a grab-bag of different reasons, with exposures of what different Committee members seeing as the most important (and occasionally these conflict with one another). The extensive redpoll comments seem, at base, to be a case of which research is to be believed and which are not, especially in regard to integration/assortive mating.

When you contrast this with the crossbills, you have a sympatric population which does not breed with other crossbill taxa. The only No votes were a commenter that said "Wait on crossbills" (literally, that was all) and a "protest vote" that reads a bit uncomfortably. From a strict-end BSC perspective, this was as easy of a call as Pacific/Winter Wren. The BSC is king here, without much room for nuance. With this philosophy in play among the NACC, you'll have a better chance of seeing a Blue-winged/Golden-winged or Townsend's/Hermit lump than a Yellow-rumped split (after all those taxa have even greater swath and depth of integration).
 
I believe the toucanet change did not pass - 4 yes votes, 5 no and 1 abstention.

I was not quite so sure what happened. Part E (2-way split) got (at least) 6 "yes" votes and some of the English name proposals got up to 7 yes votes on a conditional basis. Given that some committee members just said "yes" across the board, it's difficult to see what happened though.
 
I was wondering if Joe Morlan or anyone knows how state bird committees will handle reports of vagrant glaucoides or thayeri? California used to have a subspecies list which included longipennis etc.
 
Thayeri is a regular wintering bird right? so only glaucoides would still be a vagrant. I would guess hardcore gull folks will still look for the latter...just like they look for all the other tough to id forms.
 
Yes, there are leaked copies floating around, but they are always subject to last-minute changes. Remember "American Magpie?" I think it wise to wait until the supplement is actually published.
 
Yes, there are leaked copies floating around, but they are always subject to last-minute changes. Remember "American Magpie?" I think it wise to wait until the supplement is actually published.

Maybe they'll even put some last minute changes deliberately, to confound the leakers? :scribe:



[what was the "American Magpie" episode?]
 
Andy, any chance to have the agrammatical gibberish "sinesciurus" corrected to the original spelling before it irreversibly enters the realms of official checklists...?
Or was this corrected already? It's all over the place in the proposal comments, but I just noted that Rick uses the correct spelling.

It's misspelt in the actual supplement as well.

And since I see that's already been pointed out a minute earlier, I'll add that the supplement acknowledges that Arremonidae has priority over Passerellidae, but argues that Arremonidae is a nomen oblitum.
 
Van Remsen just released the "just published" version on his Research Gate site:

https://www.researchgate.net/public..._Society's_Check-list_of_North_American_Birds

So why did they go with that grammatical barbarism for the English name of Rallus aquaticus, when the alternative they mention but don't use, is so widely established? I thought they had a policy of following BOU names for birds that are largely extralimital vagrants in the AOU area? Clearly broken here.
 
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