Anatidae (1 Viewer)

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

The divergence dates are interesting. Those look to be at least twice the age of dates I've seen previously. Hmm.

This increasingly justifies the division of Melanitta into Melanitta and Oidemia

 

[Mysticete]

This forum has been a bit dead. Hopefully the eponym wars didn't drive off some regular posters

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

This forum has been a bit dead.

It's even beyond the forum but also in scientific journals.

 

[Jacana]

Yes, there has been a bit of a lull in papers in the past few weeks. I usually pick up a few interesting papers from my different Google Scholar alerts, but something a bit strange has been happening with them recently (more frequent alerts and fewer relevant papers).

 

[Mysticete]

I have trouble keeping up with my own field never mind ornithology, so its sometimes hard for me to tell the difference between people not posting or stuff not being published.

And IOC, NACC, and Taxonomy in flux have also been quiet lately, adding to the boredom!

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

And IOC, NACC, and Taxonomy in flux have also been quiet lately, adding to the boredom!

Even Avian Systematics. Sad.

 

[gusasp]

This increasingly justifies the division of Melanitta into Melanitta and Oidemia

Completely agree! Older than Polysticta, Mergellus and Lophodytes. Oidemia are really different as well.

Also interesting to note the relatively old age of splits within Common Merganser assemblage (Common, Scaly-bellied, Auckland and Brazilian), at least compared to the very young divergences in Somateria. Only mtDNA though, can ancient introgression explain the latter?

 

[Mysticete]

It's always good to be cautious about trees and dating that rely solely on mitochondrial DNA, especially for groups that are not the focus of the paper (e.g. anything that is not a Merganser).

 

[jts1882]

On the phylogeny and taxonomy lull, we have had an important paper on avian phylogeny this year. As someone who looks down the phylogenetic tree (or do I mean up the tree) rather than looking up from a species checklist it's been a good year, with significant papers on fish and angiosperms as well as the bird one.

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

with significant papers on fish

I saw this paper.