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    Pipridae

    Pseudopipra
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    Cockatoos

    See also SCHODDE, R., BLACK, A., & FORNASIERO, F. (2016). East or west: to which subspecies does the type specimen of the Galah, Eolophus roseicapilla (Vieillot, 1817) (Aves: Cacatuidae), belong? Zootaxa, 4067(4), 489–493. http://dx.doi.org/10.11646/zootaxa.4067.4.9
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    Guadalcanal Moustached Kingfisher

    The danger of even greater restrictions on collecting is something that scientists should take seriously, I don't see any reason to speculate about "social thought control". While I don't have any experience with or views on vertebrate collecting, invertebrate collecting is already...
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    Alaudidae

    The sequences from the specimen in question are available on Genbank (where they repeat the voucher code FMNH:352844). Blast searches for all 5 genes have other larks as the top hit, even though Bernieria sequences are available for all genes except 16S. So most likely these are genuinely lark...
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    Grey-cheeked or gray-cheeked thrush?

    Most of the species' breeding range is in Canada where the normal spelling is 'grey'. Canadian official sources do seem to stick with the American spelling of 'Gray-cheeked' however (I assume strictly following the AOU).
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    Rallidae

    The relevant article of the Code is 12.2.5 So no description is required, although the availability of the name depends on whether the association with Montagu's name is really "unambiguous".
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    Goodbye Latin, hello English

    Note that the Latin being abandoned is the previous requirement in the botanical code to provide a Latin diagnosis when describing a species. Plant names will still be Latin or Latinized.
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    Bullock's Oriole

    By coincidence, Doug Yanega (a commissioner on the ICZN) posted this to TAXACOM today: http://mailman.nhm.ku.edu/pipermail/taxacom/2013-October/078843.html
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    Myrmeciza antbirds

    Otherwise all correct, James.
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    Myrmeciza antbirds

    Here are the revised contents of the genera diagnosed in the paper: Myrmorchilus Ridgway, 1909 Type species. Myiothera strigilata Wied, 1831. Included species. Myrmorchilus strigilatus (Wied). STRIPE-BACKED ANTBIRD. Myrmophylax Todd, 1927 Type species. Formicarius atrothorax Boddaert, 1783...
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    Tyto almae

    The wing and tail measurements are intermediate between the two cayelii they examined and slightly larger than the two nominate sororcula they measured. The bill is 10% longer than those two taxa. There's a pretty big caveat though "However, we note that the sample size is very small (N=5) and...
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    Tyto almae

    Could be, but in the case of entirely allopatric species, there is no selective pressure to develop distinct species recognition characters. Thus even if the populations can't produce viable hybrids, we wouldn't necessarily see any difference in vocalization.
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    Tyto almae

    The authors use an evolutionary species concept rather than the BSC, and thus can't recognize polytypic species. From the paper:
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    AOU-NACC proposals 2013

    Possibly a mistake rather than a proposal? I don't see any other common name changes in the proposal.
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    White-winged Lark

    For old names that haven't been used since 1899, they can potentially be ignored as nomen oblitum under section 23.9 of the ICZN code. If the name has been used after 1899 but replacing the younger name is undesirable due to widespread usage, one can appeal to the ICZN to suppress the older name.
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    Cipo Cinclodes

    There are many more species concepts than just the PSC and BSC. The BSC works great for sympatric sexually reproducing species, but it's irrelevant for assessing allopatric species. Certainly one could apply a morphological or (vocal) recognition species concept in those cases, but then you're...
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    Cipo Cinclodes

    This kind of situation shows clearly the inadequacy of the BSC for evaluating species status for allopatric populations. While the playback data is interesting, the populations are fully allopatric and thus there is no selective pressure to evolve different vocalizations. It indicates that one...
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    Redpolls

    Statistics are a great way to think about the probabilities of rare birds occurring, but the numbers used in the formula have to be correct. For one thing, Andy's numbers depend on there being complete (even if rare) overlap between the 'species'. If birds at the extremes are 100%...
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    Emberizoidea

    It certainly isn't "too late" for lumping the Cardinalidae and Thraupidae. My understanding is that a sister relation between the two was not strongly supported at the time of the previous moves, while it is now. Previous classifications also didn't involve creating a new family based on...
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    Emberizoidea

    The divergence time analysis suggests all of their family-level clades split rapidly between 9-14 million years ago. This compares with a Fringillidae-Emberizoidea split of ~21 million years (this is a prior, rather than a result, of their analysis). These are definitely not ancient lineages.
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    Emberizoidea

    There are some viable taxonomic treatments in between the extremes of lumping everything into Emberizidae or accepting all of the authors' splits. For example, Cardinalidae and Thraupidae form a highly supported (100% bootstrap) clade with "Mitrospingidae". Why not lump them into a single...
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    Scolopaci

    Excellent work, Laurent. It seems that quite a few of these issues could have been caught if the authors of the various papers had BLASTed all of their sequences before using them in their analyses. At least the results are not affected too badly.
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    Sylvioidea

    Perhaps such an indication isn't a guarantee that the copies were actually published according to the code, but I think some such indication (either in the paper or on the journals website) would be necessary to satisfy 8.1.1 and 8.1.2. If someone at BMC did print multiple copies satisfying...
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    Sylvioidea

    You're right, I had the wrong section of the Code. The commonly accepted method for those publishing in online-only journals such as BMC Evol. Biol. or PLoS One is to print copies and include a statement in the online version indicating that such copies are available; PLoS does this as a matter...
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    Sylvioidea

    As it stands, this article is not considered published under the Code section 8.6. Hopefully this will be addressed when the final formatted versions are produced, otherwise the new family names will be unavailable.
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