Burrowing Owl (1 Viewer)

Baladrón, Cavalli, Isacch, Bó & Madrid 2015. Body size and sexual dimorphism in the southernmost subspecies of the Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia cunicularia). J Raptor Res 49(4): 479–485. [abstract]

Holt et al 2014 (HBW Alive).

Alberto Macías-Duarte, Courtney J. Conway, Geoffrey L. Holroyd, Héctor E. Valdez-Gómez, Melanie Culver. Genetic Variation among Island and Continental Populations of Burrowing Owl (Athene cunicularia) Subspecies in North America. Journal of Raptor Research, 53(2), (9 May 2019) https://doi.org/10.3356/JRR-18-00002

Abstract:

Burrowing Owls (Athene cunicularia) have a large geographic range spanning both North and South America and resident populations occur on many islands in the eastern Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea. Many owl populations are isolated and disjunct from other populations, but studies on genetic variation within and among populations are limited. We characterized DNA microsatellite variation in populations varying in size and geographic isolation in the Florida (A. c. floridana), the Western (A. c. hypugaea), and the Clarion (A. c. rostrata) subspecies of the Burrowing Owl. We also characterized genetic variation in a geographically isolated population of the western subspecies in central Mexico (near Texcoco Lake). Clarion Burrowing Owls had no intrapopulation variation (i.e., fixation) at 5 out of 11 microsatellite loci, a likely outcome of genetic drift in an isolated and small population. The Florida subspecies had only polymorphic loci but had reduced levels of genetic variation compared with the more-widespread western subspecies that occurs throughout western North America. Despite the extensive geographic distribution of the Western Burrowing Owl, we found genetic differentiation between the panmictic population north of the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt and the resident Texcoco Lake population in central Mexico.

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Last night I zoomed into an Audubon meeting about taxonomy and specifically about Burrowing Owls being two species. Very interesting. I really did not want to give my personal info to the Chinese Communist Party but it was worth it.
http://www.sequoia-audubon.org/program.html .
Soon they will post a recording of the video conference. Worth watching. They will also post video of the meeting of the local Audubon Society. Excellent discussion about J. J. Audubon's part in structural racism in the United States. Well one can wish.

What would be the two species?

Dave

If you look at distribution, the gap across Costa Rica/Panama/Caribbean Sea seems to be the most obvious geographic separator. I am curious if that is what they were talking about or whether it is the seemingly separated Greater Antillean population that has differentiated.

Niels

mb1848 said:

[What would be the two species?

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From what I remember one would remain Athene cunicularia described from Chile. Not sure of the northern one.
https://archive.org/details/saggiosullastori01moli/page/262/mode/2up .

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Earliest of the northern subspecies is A. c. hypugaea (Bonaparte, 1825), from western USA. The Florida subspecies wasn't named until 1874, by Ridgway :t:

the author of the talk in question is Alvaro Jaramillo, who is on my facebook. He mentioned taping South American birds and finding them very vocally distinct from the US birds, or at least the western US birds. I would be curious to see how the Caribbean birds fit into this.

If Alvaro is giving talks about splitting these, then I would expect a SACC proposal before too long :t:

Niels

There is also a substantial COI distance between Nearctic & Neotropical birds, although my notes on that don't reference a source to check sampling localities.

Reading Bonaparte 1825 he remarks about the different sounds of the Burrowing Owls from western US and Vieillot's owls from Santa Domingo.
https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/item/266952#page/99/mode/1up .
I believe the speaker placed the Florida and Carribean owls with the South American owls based at least in part on siound and the other specis ran from Central America up to into the west of North America.

Snapdragyn said:

There is also a substantial COI distance between Nearctic & Neotropical birds, although my notes on that don't reference a source to check sampling localities.

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Southern: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:AAC5430 - Argentina, Peru and Uruguay
Northern: http://www.boldsystems.org/index.php/Public_BarcodeCluster?clusteruri=BOLD:AAC5429 - US, Canada and Colombia
Average distance 4.3 %.

njlarsen said:

If Alvaro is giving talks about splitting these, then I would expect a SACC proposal before too long :t:

Niels

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Wouldn't necessarily expect it: you'd want published details with enough data to figure out where to draw the line. E.g., if Colombian birds group with northern populations, then what about pichinchae and nanodes? Knowing that there's at least two species in there doesn't tell you what those two species are.

[QUOTEWouldn't necessarily expect it: you'd want published details with enough data to figure out where to draw the line. E.g., if Colombian birds group with northern populations, then what about pichinchae and nanodes? Knowing that there's at least two species in there doesn't tell you what those two species are.][/QUOTE]
Yes the speaker emphasised there were many rivers to cross. Especially about drawing the line. He called himself a hobby taxonomist using eBird and xeno-canto for this purpose.