June 18 Revise the linear sequence and generic classification of the tribe Xolmiini.
Regarding this, I asked David Donsker:
"What looks like a short question: in your task of revising the tribe Xolmiini, does that include changing the English name of
M. alpinus from Paramo Ground Tyrant to Plain-capped Ground Tyrant, to correspond to SACC's usage?"
His response:
"Thanks for the question. It's unlikely that we will change the English name of
M. alpinus, at least in the immediate future.
Just a little bit of extra background. The English name "Plain-capped" Ground Tyrant was traditionally used for
M. alpina sensu lato since at least Meyer de Schauensee (1966). Chesser (2000) showed by mtDNA that the subspecies
M. a. grisea wasn't even particularly closely related to
M. alpina alpina, but offered no English names should they be split. Ridgely & Tudor (1994) suspected that
M. grisea was a separate species and recommended that in the event that
M. alpina be split, that the traditional name, Plain-capped Ground Tyrant, follow the
grisea subspecies and that
M. alpina sensu stricto should assume the name of Paramo Ground Tyrant. This wasn't a bad suggestion since the crown of
M. grisea is even plainer than the crown of
M. alpina sensu stricto. It's unfortunate that when Howard & Moore 3rd edition was published in 2003 that the editors chose to call the recently split
M. grisea Taczanowski's Ground Tyrant and chose to
retain the name Plain-capped Ground Tyrant for
M. alpina. As you know, SACC based its original list on H&M 3, and thus adopted its names for these two species.
IOC initially chose to follow Ridgley's sensibly applied names to the split. But we eventually caved to using Taczanowski's Ground Tyrant for
M. grisea, rather than Plain-capped Ground Tyrant
, to avoid further confusion. We thought then, and we currently still think, that dropping "Plain-capped Ground Tyrant" completely, and adopting two different names for the daughter species was/is the far better choice.
You may be aware that fairly early on, a proposal to the SACC to rename these species failed to get enough votes largely, I believe, because of the way in which the proposal was written and the choice of names that were offered.
By all accounts, Parmo Ground Tyrant is a very appropriate name for
M. alpina. I must admit that using something other than Taczanowski's Ground Tyrant would have been a better choice for
M. grisea considering that other historical names are available including the very excellent "Ash-colored Ground Tyrant", But that's all just history. Likely, all this will fade from memory and the names now adopted by SACC, Clements, H&M and HBW/Birdlife will prevail. But I'm not quite ready to yield the linguistic "high ground"."