Barn Owl (2 Viewers)

Ian Lewis said:

They will need to change the English name of Tyto alba to something other than 'Western' Barn Owl now.

Any suggestions?

Ian

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"Pale Barn Owl" Tyto alba ... ? vs American and Australasian ... ?

Scopoli Barn Owl (Scopoli, 1769)

Can anyone shed light on which of these (sub)generic names has priority...?

Megastrix Kaup 1851 (or 1852): type species = Strix tenebricosa = Tyto
tenebricosa

Scelostrix Kaup, 1851 (or 1852): type species = Strix candida = Tyto
capensis longimembris

Dactylostrix Kaup, 1851 (or 1852): type species = Strix castanops =
Tyto novaehollandiae castanops

Thanks in advance

- Megastrix Kaup seems to date from Isis (Oken), Jahrgang 1848:770 [here], and should thus have precedence over the other two.

- Dactylostrix Kaup is in Arch. Naturgesch. (Wiegmann) 17(1):111 [here]
- Both Dactylostrix and Scelostrix Kaup are in Contrib. Ornithol. (Jardine) 4:130 [here].
Both publications are dated from 1851: either Dactylostrix is senior, or they had equal precedence at publication, and you need a first-reviser act to settle the issue...
(The German work includes an explicit statement that Kaup needed more research to name a subgenus based on S. candida while, in the English work, he named this subgenus Scelostrix: it seems clear that the German work was in any case written first.)

Thank you!

Why we use Tytonidae (Mathews 1912) while Phodilidae (Beddart, 1898) seems to take precedence ?

LeNomenclatoriste said:

Why we use Tytonidae (Mathews 1912) while Phodilidae (Beddart, 1898) seems to take precedence ?

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W. J. Bock, 1994:

Note that Tytonidae Mathews, 1912 (1866) has priority with respect to Phodilinae Beddard, 1898.

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Ah ok, I didn't know .

I am very tired but I cannot find Phodilidae in this article.
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/55016#page/321/mode/1up .
It must be some other publication. The last paragraph Mr. B says there is no need for a new family.
Might be here:
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/16002#page/275/mode/1up . Photodilinae?

Strix rosenbergii (Schlegel, 1866) Ned. Tijdschr. p. 181 is the source of Mathews Tytonidae?
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/193224#page/195/mode/1up .
Vaurie says TYTONINAE. Genus. TYTO. Tyto Billberg, 1828, Synopsis Faunae Scandinaviae, 1, pt. 2, Aves, table A, new name for Strix of Savigny, 1809 (the genus of the barn owls), which is preoccupied by Strix Linnaeus, 1758 (for the tawny, wood owls)
Tytoninae Mathews 1912 type alba Scopoli. I do not see rosenbergii??
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/3109888#page/280/mode/1up .
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/104096#page/132/mode/1up .

Peter Kovalik said:

W. J. Bock, 1994:

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With the usual caveat - what Bock wrote in 1994 is, unfortunately, far from reliable...

• Phodilinae Lesson 1843 (not Beddard 1898) (type genus Phodilus Geoffroy St-Hilaire 1830; original spelling Phodilae; original rank tribe; original description: Lesson RP. 1843. Index ornithologique. L'Écho du monde savant, 10e Année, 2e semestre, 26:613-614.; p.613 [here]).
  
  (Bock cited this name from Beddard 1898; OS Photodilinae; OR subfamily; OD Beddard FE. 1898. The structure and classification of birds. Longmans, Green, and Co, London.; p. 251 [here] = subsequent use.
  Note that Beddard's "version" of the name was based on a deliberate emendation of the type genus, Photodilus; Beddard 1898 was not even the first author to propose a family-group name based on this emendation, however. This had been done before by Blanford 1895; OS Photodilinae; OR subfamily; OD Blanford WT. 1895. Birds – Vol. III. in Blanford WT (ed.). The fauna of British India, including Ceylon and Burma. Taylor and Francis, London.; p.298 [here].)​
• Tytonidae/nae Mathews 1912 (type genus Tyto Billsberg 1828; OS Tytonidae; OR family; OD Mathews GM. 1912. A reference-list to the birds of Australia. Novit. Zool. 18:171-455.; p.256 [here])
  
  Tytoninae takes precedence from
  
  
  

  • Hybridinae (not "Hybreinae") Lilljeborg 1860 (not 1866) (type genus Hybris Nitzsch 1840, in the synonymy of Tyto; OS Hybridini; OR subfamily; OD Lilljeborg W. 1860. Ornitologiska Bidrag. I. Utkast till en systematisk öfversigt af Foglarnes klass. Årsskrift Kongl.Vetenskaps-soc.Upsala 1:263-287.; p.284 [here]).
  (Bock cited this name from Lilljeborg 1866; same OS & OR; OD Lilljeborg W. 1866. Outlines of a systematic review of the class of birds. Proc. Zool. Soc. London, year 1866:5-20.; p.19 [here] = subsequent use.
  Bock also "corrected" the (correct) original stem of this name to "Hybre[inae]", a correction that apparently assumed Hybris is the Greek word ὕβρις, -εως (ἡ) = violence, rather than the Greek word ὑβρίς, -ίδος (ἡ) = a night bird of prey - this "correction" is evidently unjustified.)​

Thus what we have is Tytonidae Mathews 1912 (1860), which, despite taking precedence from 6 years earlier than what Bock claimed, is still decidedly junior to Phodilinae Lesson 1843.

Note [Art.35.5 of the ICZN], however.

So, the family name Tytonidae is retained, anyway ?

l_raty said:

With the usual caveat - what Bock wrote in 1994 is, unfortunately, far from reliable...

Note [Art.35.5 of the ICZN], however.

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Gah. Thank you Laurent. It's time to get rid of some things. B

Luckily Barn Owls are everywhere so someone should submit a petition to make the Family name Phodilidae Lesson 1841 instead of Tytonidae Mathews 1912 (1866) to all of the bird list committees. I nominate Nutcracker.
Bock says that Strigidae 1838 is unavailable. Why? Here is Striginae Bp. From 1831.
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/38298#page/49/mode/1up .
Saggio d'una distribuzione metodica degli Animali Vertebrati .
Then there is also Strigidae Anon. “Leach” 1819 and/or 1820. From Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum. There is an 1814 and 1824 versions online but not 1819 1820.

Or someone should submit a petition to suppress the earlier form due to prevailing usage?

Niels

mb1848 said:

Luckily Barn Owls are everywhere so someone should submit a petition .... I nominate Nutcracker.

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No thanks! :-O

I'd be for suppressing Phodilidae as per Niels's point of no usage.

mb1848 said:

Bock says that Strigidae 1838 is unavailable. Why?

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Presumably as a homonym of Strigidae Vigors, 1825.

mb1848 said:

Luckily Barn Owls are everywhere so someone should submit a petition to make the Family name Phodilidae Lesson 1841 instead of Tytonidae Mathews 1912 (1866) to all of the bird list committees. I nominate Nutcracker.
Bock says that Strigidae 1838 is unavailable. Why? Here is Striginae Bp. From 1831.
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/38298#page/49/mode/1up .
Saggio d'una distribuzione metodica degli Animali Vertebrati .

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It is the same as Strigidae Leach 1819.
The fact that Bonaparte applied Strix Linnaeus to barn owls, while we now apply the very same Strix Linnaeus to wood owls, did not result in two distinct 'versions' of Strix separately available from Linnaeus with different type species. With only one generic name to act as type, you cannot typify two family-group names applying to two distinct taxa.

Then there is also Strigidae Anon. “Leach” 1819 and/or 1820. From Synopsis of the Contents of the British Museum. There is an 1814 and 1824 versions online but not 1819 1820.

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I've never found the 17th edition of 1820 either (the only one that Bock cited).

14th ed. (1818): [here] (no family-group names).
15th ed. (1819): [here] (10 names are available from this edition, including Strigidae).
16th ed. (1819): [here] (reworked text in comparison to 15th ed., but the names are the same).
>
18th ed. (1821): [here] (8 names are there that were not in the 15th/16th eds, nor in Rafinesque's Analyse de la nature).
19th ed. (1821): [here] (fully identical to the 18th ed.).

The names in the 18th and 19th ed. are precisely those that Bock placed in the 17th ed., hence my working hypothesis is that the text is most likely the same there as well.

Incidentally, note how Leach listed the "White Owl" prominently as first member of his Strigidae...

Laurent thanks for the explanation and the links to all the synopsi. 15th edition 1819 the description of the eleventh room was page 63-67 and in the 17th edition was p. 65-70.
https://repository.si.edu/bitstream...Bua non-passerines.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y .
In 1816 Leach wrote a book and called White Owl Strix flammea .
http://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/46105#page/21/mode/1up . He wrote this publication I think because the museum purchased Colonel Montegu's collection of british birds and Leach possibly organized the collection. The New Zealanders state: "We followed Bock (1994) and Olson (1995) in accepting Leach (1820) as author of many family-group names but amend some, at the suggestion of Olson (1995), to allow some names to be attributed to Leach (1819). Through the help of Robert Prˆys-Jones (the Natural History Museum, Tring) we were able to confirm that it was indeed the 1819 15th edition of Leach’s “11th Room-Synopsis” that first contained latinised family names."

Uva Vera, Päckert Martin, Cibois Alice, Fumagalli Luca, Roulin Alexandre. Comprehensive molecular phylogeny of barn owls and relatives (Family: Tytonidae), and their six major Pleistocene radiations. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 11 March 2018

Abstract:

The owl family Tytonidae comprises two genera: Phodilus, limited to the forests of central Africa and South-East Asia, and the ubiquitous Tyto. The genus Tyto is majorly represented by the cosmopolitan Common Barn Owl group, with more than 30 subspecies worldwide. Discrete differences in body size and plumage colouration have led to the classification of this family into many species and subspecies, but the taxonomic status and phylogenetic relationships between taxa remain unclear, and in some groups controversial. Although several previous studies attempted to resolve this problem, they have been limited in their taxonomic and geographical coverage, or have relied on restricted molecular evidence and low sample sizes. Based on the most comprehensive sampling to date (16 out of 17 Tyto species, and one out of three Phodilus species), a multi-locus approach using seven mitochondrial and two nuclear markers, and taking advantage of field data and museum collections available worldwide, our main questions in this study were: 1) what are the phylogenetic relationships and classification status of the whole family; 2) when and where did the most important speciation events occur?. We confirm that the Common Barn Owl, Tyto alba is divided into three main evolutionary units: 1) the American Barn Owl, T. furcata; 2) the Western Barn Owl, T. alba; and 3) the Eastern Barn Owl, T. javanica, and suggest a Late Miocene (ca. 6 mya) Australasian and African origin of the group. Our results are supported by fossil age information, given that the most recent common ancestor between the Tytonidae genera Phodilus and Tyto was probably from the Oligocene (ca. 28 mya) of Australasia. We finally reveal six major Pleistocene radiations of Tyto, all resulting in wide-range distributions.

LeNomenclatoriste said:

Uva Vera, Päckert Martin, Cibois Alice, Fumagalli Luca, Roulin Alexandre. Comprehensive molecular phylogeny of barn owls and relatives (Family: Tytonidae), and their six major Pleistocene radiations. Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution, In Press, Accepted Manuscript, Available online 11 March 2018

Abstract:

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The link to the abstract doesn't work for me, anyone else having the same problem?