But 50 of them?
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Stejneger's Stonechat (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Ian Lewis
- Start date
But 50 of them?
Nutcracker
Stop Brexit!
True; I hadn't realised there were that many in the samples!
Though I suppose there is the (remote) possibility of a past hybridisation event resulting in a local or regional population of maurus in Kazakhstan carrying the relevant stejnegeri genes??
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l_raty
laurent raty
Now in press in Mol Ecol. [abstract & suppl info]
Daniel Philippe
Well-known member
l_raty
laurent raty
(Thanks Daniel. The link is not correct, however -- it points to the abstract of Zink et al 2009.)
[pdf]
Supplementary files:
http://www.senckenberg.de/files/con...ology/vz68-3/Opaev/supplementary_table_s1.pdf
http://www.senckenberg.de/files/con...ology/vz68-3/Opaev/supplementary_table_s2.pdf
http://www.senckenberg.de/files/con...ology/vz68-3/Opaev/supplementary_table_s3.pdf
http://www.senckenberg.de/files/con...zoology/vz68-3/Opaev/supplementary_fig_s1.pdf
(Taken from [here], albeit one of the links to the supplementary files is wrong there (and now). I corrected it in the above.)
Abstract
The common stonechat Saxicola torquatus traditionally was considered as a polytypic species widely distributed in Africa, Europe and Asia. Recently, several authors have suggested that this formerly single species needs to be split into several distinct species composing the Saxicola torquatus complex based on mitochondrial markers. However, mitochondrial DNA alone is not sufficient for the evaluation of species status. In this paper, we reviewed the taxonomy of Northern Eurasian taxa from the complex based on morphometrics, plumage, song and alarm calls. The morphological and vocal data clearly matched the phylogroups reconstructed from mitochondrial DNA sequences, and separated Northern Eurasian taxa of the Saxicola torquatus complex into three groups: rubicola, maurus and stejnegeri. We proposed the species status for these three groups: European stonechat Saxicola rubicola, eastern stonechat Saxicola maurus and Japanese stonechat Saxicola stejnegeri. Among them, S. stejnegeri is a cryptic species as it cannot be distinguished by morphometrics and by worn spring plumage from S. maurus, but differs noticeably by male song.
(We'd really need more data from the southern Asian taxa, though, I think.)
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Daniel Philippe
Well-known member
Ah ! sorry |:S|
MJB
Well-known member
Laurent,
What's your view on the taxonomic argument therein that on priority grounds Svensson should have named the hemprichii population variegatus?
MJB
l_raty
laurent raty
It's not really a matter of priority. The central issue is which taxon ("southern" or "northern" Caspian Stonechat) the name variegatus Gmelin 1774 applies to.
Opaev et al now say "northern", which was also the universally accepted interpretation before 2012. If correct, the name variegatus Gmelin 1774 must be used for the northern form, hemprichii Ehrenberg 1833 is in its synonymy, and the southern form must be called armenicus Stegmann 1935.
In 2012, Svensson et al disagreed, saying "southern", and they where quite widely followed in this reinterpretation. If correct, the name variegatus Gmelin 1774 must be used for the southern form, armenicus Stegmann 1935 is in its synonymy, and the northern form must be called hemprichii Ehrenberg 1833.
Svensson et al offered three arguments:
- Some measurements given by Gmelin seem to match the southern form better. Comparability to modern measurements might easily be questioned, however, I believe. (Whether such comparisons can be trusted might possibly be established by comparing the measurements given by Gmelin for other birds of unquestioned identity, to the modern measurements of the same taxa; but this has not been done so far -- or at least not that I'm aware.)
- "Southern" would be the form that breeds at Şamaxı, Azerbaijan, which is the type locality of variegatus Gmelin 1774. In support of this, Svensson et al cited Stegmann, in the work where he described armenicus. However, I suspect they may actually have "over-read" Stegmann's statements here.
Stegmann's words were (about his armenicus; text taken from Google Books snippets):
(More or less: "Inhabits the highlands of Armenia (Kurdistan, Urmia) to the border of Mesopotamia, as well as, apparently, parts of East Transcaucasia, where also transitions to variegata already occur. Incidentally, only one specimen from 20 May 1896 from Şamaxı can be regarded as a doubtless breeding bird; the others (from Tbilisi and Sakataly) were collected in March.")
Svensson et al commented:
It seems doubtful to me that Stegmann really intended to make Şamaxı the only place where his new taxon was demonstrably breeding; rather, he presumably intended to indicate Şamaxı as the only locality in East Transcaucasia he could report and where his taxon would unquestionably have bred (breeding birds from this area being otherwise what he called "variegata"; and all the other birds attributable to his "armenica" and collected in said area having in fact been possible migrants).
Here, Opaev et al seem to suggest (but without offering evidence) that the Şamaxı bird was actually misidentified by Stegmann. They say that the breeding range of the southern form does not reach East Transcaucasia (so that the populations breeding at Şamaxı are "northern"). - There is no white apparent in the tail of the bird as shown on Gmelin's plate. If indicative of an actual lack of white, this would suggest "southern"; but the tail is folded, and white might simply be concealed (as Svensson et al themselves admitted). (The plate shows a male in fresh autumn plumage; in the text, Gmelin described the tail as being composed of 12 feathers, which were white at the base, then black, but ochre-coloured at the tip and on the sides; in a coloured version of the plate [see link below], deep ochre extends along the entire outer edge of the tail.)
Opaev et al write that the plate matches their experience of the northern taxon.
__________
- Svensson L, Shirihai H, Frahnert S, Dickinson EC. 2012. Taxonomy and nomenclature of the Stonechat complex Saxicola torquatus sensu lato in the Caspian region. Bull. Brit. Ornithol. Cl., 132: 260-269. [here]
- Gmelin SG. 1774. Reise durch Rußland, zur Untersuchung der drey Natur-Reiche. Dritter Theil. Reise durch das nordliche Persien, in den Jahren 1770. 1771. bis im April 1772. Kayserl. Academie der Wissenschaften, St. Petersburg. [description of variegatus] [illustration of variegatus]
- Ehrenberg CG. "1828" (= 1833). Symbolae physicae seu icones et descriptiones avium quae ex itineribus per Africam borealem et Asiam occidentalem Friderici Guilelmi Hemprich et Christiani Godofredi Ehrenberg studio novae au illustratae redierunt. Officina Academica, Berlin. [description of hemprichii]
- Stegmann BK. 1935. Zur Verbreitung und geographischen Variabilität des schwarzkehligen Wiesenschmätzers. C.-R. (Doklady) Acad. Sci. URSS, n. ser., 3: 45-47. (Should anyone find an accessible version online, I'd be interested. There are two scanned copies of this volume in Google Books, in snippet view only, one of them dated "1963" and which seems to be a reprint: [copy #1] [copy #2]. The text here is (so far as I can assess) entirely in German; but Opaev et al cite is as "in Russian", so it may be that a Russian-language version also exists.)
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Brian J Small
Well-known member
'"Southern" would be the form that breeds at Şamaxı, Azerbaijan, which is the type locality of variegatus Gmelin 1774. In support of this, Svensson et al cited Stegmann, in the work where he described armenicus.'
Photos of birds breeding at Best Barmag - 50 km from Shamakhi (Şamaxı) Azerbaijan
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5uifBN0b...gASyUNURsgCLcBGAs/s1600/7_tail-variegatus.jpg
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e9oEA60l...VeCgJI2POUlyGMgCLcBGAs/s1600/7_variegatus.jpg
Brian S
Photos of birds breeding at Best Barmag - 50 km from Shamakhi (Şamaxı) Azerbaijan
https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5uifBN0b...gASyUNURsgCLcBGAs/s1600/7_tail-variegatus.jpg
https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-e9oEA60l...VeCgJI2POUlyGMgCLcBGAs/s1600/7_variegatus.jpg
Brian S
mb1848
Well-known member
Štegman called the bird Saxicola torqnata armenica. If you search copy two with armenica Google Books gives you four lines of the OD on page 47.
https://books.google.com/books?id=zwNPAAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=armenica .
https://books.google.com/books?id=zwNPAAAAIAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=armenica .
l_raty
laurent raty
...then comes the habitat statement I already quoted in post #68 above.
About variegatus (p. 46), he wrote:
Thus Stegmann was indeed uncertain that this form bred in East Transcaucasia. (But he clearly considered Gmelin's description to match the autumn plumage of this taxon.)
