Steppe Grey Shrike (1 Viewer)

Hi

I was just updating my paltry yearlist when I noticed a potential omission from my paltry lifelist. The last time I went to Scilly (2009) I saw a Steppe Grey Shrike which is not on my list, I think because I wasn't sure it was a full species. I thought the Latin name was Lanius Pallidirostris but looking on Bubo here are three items from lists:

BOU Southern Grey Shrike Lanius Meridionalis
UK400 Saxaul Grey Shrike Lanius Pallidirostris
Birdwatch Steppe Grey Shrike Lanius Meridionalis

Is someone able to clarify for me:

1) The real Latin name of the Steppe Grey Shrike
2) Is it actually a full species in its own right (I usually use BOU, so I assume it is not).

Thanks

Rob

Rob,
The BOU consider ‘Steppe Grey Shrike’ to be a sub-species of Southern Grey Shrike and therefore list it as Lanius meridionalis pallidirostris
The nominate form of Southern Grey Shrike Lanius meridionalis meridionalis has not been officially recorded in Britain (yet).

The IOU consider ‘Steppe Grey Shrike’ to be a species however and therefore list it as Lanius pallidirostris.
They may soon review the whole complex however and include it in Asian Grey Shrike Lanius lahtora as Lanius lahtora pallidirostris.

The UK400 also consider it a full species Lanius pallidirostris but also consider its English name unsuitable as it actually breeds in semi-desert (not Steppe) where the predominate plants are Saxaul trees, hence Saxaul Grey Shrike.

I think that’s right but stand to be corrected.

Steve.

Swannery Steve said:

Rob,
The BOU consider ‘Steppe Grey Shrike’ to be a sub-species of Southern Grey Shrike and therefore list it as Lanius meridionalis pallidirostris
The nominate form of Southern Grey Shrike Lanius meridionalis meridionalis has not been officially recorded in Britain (yet).

The IOU consider ‘Steppe Grey Shrike’ to be a species however and therefore list it as Lanius pallidirostris.

The UK400 also consider it a full species Lanius pallidirostris but also consider its English name unsuitable as it actually breeds in semi-desert (not Steppe) where the predominate plants are Saxaul trees, hence Saxaul Grey Shrike.

I think that’s right but stand to be corrected.

Steve.

Click to expand...

Further to all that, molecular results so far suggest interesting groupings of taxa at present attributed to Great Grey/Southern Grey shrikes; other aspects of molecular research are generally agreed to confirm or rearrange the preliminary findings. However, it would seem that one grouping would be of pallidirostris and lahtora: if confirmed, the species name would be Lanius lahtora due to naming priority. The English name Steppe Grey shrike is a misnomer - it doesn't breed on steppes, but often in saxaul, hence one suggested name is Saxaul Grey Shrike, but saxaul distribution aligns poorly overall. Within OSME, and applicable geographic name would be Mauryan Grey Shrike, reflecting the existence of that early empire that at its maximum extent, covered the breeding grounds of the putative Lanius lahtora quite well!
MJB

Thanks for that. I have just had another look at my list and see that in fact I ticked it in the Southern Grey Shrike section. Will have to wait to see what happens in the end, at least it is somehow a full species or a subspecies of a separate species, so hopefully the tick is fair!

Sorry was writing when your post came in MJB. Thank you for that, this taxonomy lark is a real pain, plane spotting was so much easier (but more anoraky it has to be said)

Sorry MJB I actually edited my original post and added the bit about Asian Grey Shrike before your reply appeared.

Steve.

Rob, for further background, see Olsson et al 2010.

Blimey, I opened that link up and thought, oh it's an orthopaedics review! Elsevier get everywhere!

Thanks, I might read it, I might even understand some of the words (I got a U at Biology O-Level).

Quick addition, I just started to look through it and sometimes I wish I had done Biology properly, what a great subject.

Rob

Right here is a controversial question. There is no doubt that there is a pheno(type)
menal amount of work that has gone into this paper. But what is the use of it in the bigger world? Sure we know more about shrikes but does it have a wider use? (This is not a criticism I am genuinely interested to know what it might mean in the big wide world).

Thanks

Rob

Swannery Steve said:

Sorry MJB I actually edited my original post and added the bit about Asian Grey Shrike before your reply appeared.

Steve.

Click to expand...

Steve,
No apology necessary for goodwill duplication! I'd rather see that than no input.B
MJB

BD344 said:

Right here is a controversial question. There is no doubt that there is a pheno(type)
menal amount of work that has gone into this paper. But what is the use of it in the bigger world? Sure we know more about shrikes but does it have a wider use? (This is not a criticism I am genuinely interested to know what it might mean in the big wide world). Thanks, Rob

Click to expand...

Rob,
We met at the BBF on a book-signing event on the WildSounds stand where we ensured you had a decent wine in a plastic cup instead of water!

Amongst the shrikes, the phenotype isn't as straightforward as it might be, and for genuine reasons. First, to definitions:

The genotype–phenotype distinction is drawn in genetics. "Genotype" is an organism's full hereditary information. "Phenotype" is an organism's actual observed properties, such as morphology, development, or behaviour. This distinction is fundamental in the study of inheritance of traits and their evolution.

However, the relationships between the 'large Grey Shrike taxa' and between the 'Brown/Red-backed/Isabelline taxa' are problematical. Charles Vaurie in his writings in the 1950s veered very close to the interim findings of Olsson et al that Richard cited above, and through morphology, but the weight of the opinion of others (very reasonable under the extant circumstances) produced essentially the current excubitor/meridionalis divide. Like many debates, there were good arguments at the time for both views. As a consequence, there is a view that the pre-molecular biology phenotypes, as defined above, are becoming less plausible, but to differing degrees for different taxa - here I should emphasise that neither Olsson et al nor Panov 2011* have sampled all taxa/populations in the excubitor/meridionalis complex in their DNA research: indeed, initial mtDNA findings suggest relationships with Nearctic shrike taxa outside this complex. This conundrum demands investigation through other DNA techniques (Per Alström pers comm) before definitive conclusions can be reached: these may confirm or confound the interim findings of Olsson et al and Evgeniy Panov.

My guess is that much of the proposed interim revision will be supported, some parts solidly, and some less so, and that most of the previous phenotypes will need revision. Inject into this maelstrom of conjecture the point that several of the taxa involved have type specimens erected from passage specimens away from the (now [imperfectly] known) breeding grounds...

To quote WSC, here is "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key"; the teasing out of a robust solution will take time and patience, no matter the heartfelt cries of listers...
MJB
*Panov, EN. 2011. True Shrikes - Laniidae of the World. Ecology, Behavior, Evolution. Pensoft. Moscow, Russia. (In which there is an interesting essay: Bannikova, A. 2010. On the molecular phylogeny in the genus Lanius. Appendix 2 In: Panov, EN. True Shrikes - Laniidae of the World. Ecology, Behavior, Evolution. Pensoft. Moscow, Russia.)

Did we? That was a very nice event I must say but sorry I do not remember an MJB? (I do remember drinking red wine though, so does my wife!). What I meant was how does knowing about shrike taxonomy benefit the world in general? I can see it helps understand species differences (sorry for the simplistic words) but does it have a wider more useful appeal? The reason I ask is because if I had a load of money I would love to invest it in science but only in something that I could see had a wider benefit....and while that paper is no doubt interesting, does it actually have some use? Again not a criticism I am genuinely interested to know.

I work in a science based industry in orthopaedics, so it is relatively easy to see where you might spend research money, e.g. to make people better somehow. I am wondering other than pure science, if mapping taxa in birds has a wider use other than for science.

BD344 said:

The reason I ask is because if I had a load of money I would love to invest it in science but only in something that I could see had a wider benefit....and while that paper is no doubt interesting, does it actually have some use?

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As somebody whose day job is in the sciences I hope you'll permit me a comment. Your line is precisely the one increasingly taken by funding bodies, in particular the government-funded ones. They only want to pay for research that can lead to clearly defined benefits in the short term.

The history of science shows that concentrating on short-term benefit will typically not help in making big jumps in knowledge, because by definition, in order to comply with the description just given, such research has to be incremental.

If we stick with this attribute we're going to kill off whole branches of science, such as a lot of physics, pure mathematics (if we take it as a science here, which is the standard), and even in a science like biology you'd effectively kill most of the bits not to do with health, and maybe some ecology.

A lot of the background data that is now used in order to study climate change, for example, wouldn't have been collected if we'd gone strictly by the `but what is it good for in the short run' dictum. What has the good of the theory of relativity, or quantum physics, been other than to science?

There are a lot of examples where the research that over time turned out to be really valuable in our understanding was an instance of `blue sky thinking' (horrible term that, but it seems `foundational research' is not considered a valid concept any longer by many) at the time it was conducted.

Sure, we still have to prioritise funding, but if we concentrate on short term gain we'll likely damage ourselves in the longer run. Also, surely for projects that are likely to be exploitable in the short term, it should be possible to get more funding from industry since they'll be the ones who will profit from the commercialization? If there is a place for foundational research, and there should be, it has to be publicly funded.

I don't know whether this is the answer you were looking for, but I'd love to hear a reaction to this statement.

Andrea

I think it is precisely the answer I was looking for - very interesting. To a non-researcher though, it is difficult to imagine why I would give money to taxnomic issues in birds rather than e.g. contact area studies in knee replacements.

But I take your point, something I had not considered and thank you for the information.