Alfred Russel Wallace - A Very Important Ornithologist (1 Viewer)

Megaloblatta · Mar 17, 2018

Thought you might be interested in my latest online article: http://wallacefund.info/content/alfred-russel-wallace-very-important-ornithologist Not only is Wallace not acknowledged by many as the co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection, but few birders and professional ornithologists realise what a huge contribution he made to ornithology!

fugl · Mar 18, 2018

Megaloblatta said:
Thought you might be interested in my latest online article: http://wallacefund.info/content/alfred-russel-wallace-very-important-ornithologist Not only is Wallace “not acknowledged by many as the co-discoverer of evolution by natural selection, but few birders and professional ornithologists realise what a huge contribution he made to ornithology!

Wallace was a remarkable man who, as you say, made many important contributions to ornithology, but it’s simply not true that his role as co-discoverer of natural selection is “not acknowledged by many”. If anything, it’s over-acknowledged—I’ve never read a book or article dealing with natural selection that doesn’t credit Wallace —since it was Darwin, not Wallace who undertook the painstaking work of putting flesh on this “best idea anyone ever had” and in so doing took the first giant steps towards establishing natural selection as the central organizing principle of modern biology.

Megaloblatta · Mar 18, 2018

I personally believe that it is Darwin who is over-acknowledged (lol) since the theory of natural selection was jointly published by both men and they therefore deserve equal credit and attention. Your comments about Darwin "putting flesh" on the theory overlooks the fact that Wallace came up with very many of the ideas which underpin the entire edifice that is evolutionary theory (see for example http://wallacefund.info/content/scientific-legacy) - he was even, ironically, the first Neo-darwinian! (See http://wallacefund.info/terms-darwinism-and-neo-darwinism) Although it is true that Wallace is briefly mentioned in biographies of Darwin, people who are not especially knowledgeable about the history of evolutionary theory usually do not know who Wallace is. For example the BBC did a survey of random people in Broadstone, Dorset where Wallace built his last house and is buried, and whilst nearly all had heard of Darwin, no one knew who Wallace was! So whilst most people who are seriously interested in the history of evolutionary theory know who Wallace is, they are the tiny minority - and the rest of the population who know about "Darwin's theory" don't in fact realise that it is "Darwin AND Wallace's" theory. Anyway - this is an aside - the point of my post was to make more people aware of Wallace's huge contributions to ornithology!

Megaloblatta · Mar 18, 2018

If anyone reading this knows of any sources giving information about who collected the most new bird species and who named the most species, I would be grateful to have the information. Thanks.

fugl · Mar 19, 2018

Megaloblatta said:
I personally believe that it is Darwin who is over-acknowledged (lol) since the theory of natural selection was jointly published by both men and they therefore deserve equal credit and attention. Your comments about Darwin "putting flesh" on the theory overlooks the fact that Wallace came up with very many of the ideas which underpin the entire edifice that is evolutionary theory (see for example http://wallacefund.info/content/scientific-legacy) - he was even, ironically, the first Neo-darwinian! (See http://wallacefund.info/terms-darwinism-and-neo-darwinism) Although it is true that Wallace is briefly mentioned in biographies of Darwin, people who are not especially knowledgeable about the history of evolutionary theory usually do not know who Wallace is. For example the BBC did a survey of random people in Broadstone, Dorset where Wallace built his last house and is buried, and whilst nearly all had heard of Darwin, no one knew who Wallace was! So whilst most people who are seriously interested in the history of evolutionary theory know who Wallace is, they are the tiny minority - and the rest of the population who know about "Darwin's theory" don't in fact realise that it is "Darwin AND Wallace's" theory. Anyway - this is an aside - the point of my post was to make more people aware of Wallace's huge contributions to ornithology!

The Origin of Species, have you read it? That’s where the flesh is!

Taphrospilus · Mar 19, 2018

Even if part of the etymology forum quiet a lot of dedications for this gentleman if we look here (and that's just birds).

Paul Clapham · Mar 19, 2018

Megaloblatta said:
If anyone reading this knows of any sources giving information about who collected the most new bird species and who named the most species, I would be grateful to have the information. Thanks.

To find that out it would be helpful to have access to the databases which no doubt support the major world taxonomies. In the absence of that I looked in the IOC's spreadsheet of the world's birds and searched for "Wallace,". This finds only species and subspecies named by somebody called "Wallace", which I suspect can only be our hero A. R. Wallace. The dates are all between 1862 and 1868.

There are 98 such cells; however several of them are where his name is attached both to a species and its nominate subspecies. It's beyond my Excel skills to sort those out but it's fair to say that he named (in the scientific sense) more than 80 species.

I'm sure there are people who named more than that, but it would take more than a simple Excel search to find the record-holder. And as for how many species collected: that would be an almost impossible task.

ClarkWGriswold · Mar 19, 2018

I hadnt realised until today that he lived in a farm just up the road from for 5 years. I knew there was a link to Neath but just assumed he lived in the town centre.

Rich

Megaloblatta · Mar 19, 2018

Paul Clapham: I am surprised that no one seems to have published a paper on this as bird people seem to love to compile statistics of all kinds! Yes, there are certainly a number of other people who named more taxa (e.g. Linnaeus, John Gould), but I am betting that Wallace is in the top 10%. And I doubt that anyone has ever collected more new bird species - or perhaps even bird specimens.

Paul Clapham · Mar 20, 2018

Megaloblatta said:
Paul Clapham: I am surprised that no one seems to have published a paper on this as bird people seem to love to compile statistics of all kinds! Yes, there are certainly a number of other people who named more taxa (e.g. Linnaeus, John Gould), but I am betting that Wallace is in the top 10%. And I doubt that anyone has ever collected more new bird species - or perhaps even bird specimens.

Obsessive? Moi? Okay, I wrote the program and yes, Linnaeus is at the top with 738 and Gould is second with 671. Hartert is third with 649. Wallace is in a tie for 76th place with 77 taxa named, which looks like a long way down but in fact there are 1,773 different names in the "Authority" column. So he's comfortably inside the top 10%.

This is all from the IOC version 8.1 spreadsheet, by the way.

James Jobling · Mar 20, 2018

Obsessive? No (or not much, anyway!). Fascinating? Yes. Can you reveal who are the top 10? I might try to incorporate your findings into the Key (duly acknowledged, of course).

Björn Bergenholtz · Mar 20, 2018

Birds of the World (Lars Larsson, 2001, CD-ROM) listed the top 50 Authors (as I read it; of species, not incl. subspecies).

The top-10 in this list was:

1. Linnaeus / von Linné (707)
2. Sclater, P. L. (440)
3. Vieillot (394)
4. Gould (385)
5. Temminck (348)
6. Gmelin, J. F. (347)
7. Lafresnaye (233)
8. Salvin (223)
9. Sharpe (198)
10. Bonaparte (181)

If counted correctly is unknown to me. I haven't counted them, I just read what he wrote.

Note: but that´s in 2001, as of now (due to splits) Cassin must have entered the top-10. I haven't checked the later Editions (2nd and third/DVD). And I assume all (or most) of the many synonyms to be excluded.

Björn

PS. Unfortunatelly we cannot ask Larsson himself, as he´s no longer with us († 2014).
---

Megaloblatta · Mar 20, 2018

Paul Clapham said:
Obsessive? Moi? Okay, I wrote the program and yes, Linnaeus is at the top with 738 and Gould is second with 671. Hartert is third with 649. Wallace is in a tie for 76th place with 77 taxa named, which looks like a long way down but in fact there are 1,773 different names in the "Authority" column. So he's comfortably inside the top 10%.

This is all from the IOC version 8.1 spreadsheet, by the way.

Excellent - thanks! Wallace actually named 105 species group taxa of which 82 are still considered valid, 35 of them being full species (Collar & Prys-Jones, 2013). The number of 'full species' is rising as ornithologists 'up-grade' subspecies to species. See Collar, N. J. & Prys-Jones, R. P. 2013. Pioneer of Asian ornithology: Alfred Russel Wallace. BirdingASIA, 20: 15-30. [http://people.ds.cam.ac.uk/cns26/njc/Papers/Collar%20&%20Prys-Jones%202013%20Alfred%20Russel%20Wallace.pdf]

Megaloblatta · Mar 20, 2018

Calalp said:
Birds of the World (Lars Larsson, 2001, CD-ROM) listed the top 50 Authors (as I read it; of species, not incl. subspecies).

The top-10 in this list was:

1. Linnaeus / von Linné (707)

2. Sclater, P. L. (440)

3. Vieillot (394)

4. Gould (385)

5. Temminck (348)

6. Gmelin, J. F. (347)

7. Lafresnaye (233)

8. Salvin (223)

9. Sharpe (198)

10. Bonaparte (181)

If counted correctly is unknown to me. I haven't counted them, I just read what he wrote.

Note: but that´s in 2001, as of now (due to splits) Cassin must have entered the top-10. I haven't checked the later Editions (2nd and third/DVD). And I assume all (or most) of the many synonyms to be excluded.

Björn

PS. Unfortunatelly we cannot ask Larsson himself, as he´s no longer with us († 2014).
---

Thanks!

Paul Clapham · Mar 20, 2018

From the IOC version 8.1 list:

All taxa, top 12:

1 Linnaeus 738
2 Gould 671
3 Hartert 649
4 Sclater, PL 573
5 Sharpe 566
6 Vieillot 462
7 Ridgway 437
8 Gmelin, JF 421
9 Reichenow 420
10 Chapman 391
11 Temminck 391
12 Bonaparte 360

Species only, top 12:

1 Linnaeus 718
2 Gould 414
3 Vieillot 396
4 Gmelin, JF 369
5 Temminck 343
6 Sclater, PL 338
7 Sharpe 226
8 Bonaparte 201
9 Blyth 197
10 Lesson, R 167
11 Gray, GR 160
12 Latham 158

However... often a taxon is named by more than one author. I assumed that ignoring that wouldn't affect those old-timers a lot, but then I noticed this:

19 Sclater, PL & Salvin 120

So it does make a difference. I'll leave these results here but I'm off to work on that issue now.

Paul Clapham · Mar 20, 2018

I'm back. Splitting the "authority" column into individual authors does make quite a difference! In particular Hartert had a lot of shared publications.

All taxa, top 10:

1 Hartert 848
2 Sclater, PL 794
3 Linnaeus 738
4 Gould 676
5 Sharpe 577
6 Reichenow 473
7 Vieillot 466
8 Ridgway 437
9 Temminck 431
10 Gmelin, JF 421

Species-level taxa only:

1 Linnaeus 718
2 Sclater, PL 465
3 Gould 417
4 Vieillot 399
5 Gmelin, JF 369
6 Temminck 365
7 Salvin 242
8 Lafresnaye 234
9 Sharpe 230
10 Bonaparte 203

This still isn't completely accurate as the spreadsheet data almost always uses the ampersand character & to separate two names in an authority, but occasionally uses the comma. So for example there's "(Rothschild, Hartert & Kleinschmidt, O, 1897)" in one cell. Splitting on the & yields "Rothschild, Hartert" and "Kleinschmidt, O" as the authors, which is wrong, but splitting on the & and comma yields "Rothschild" and "Hartert" and "Kleinschmidt" and "O", which is also wrong.

Megaloblatta · Mar 21, 2018

Paul Clapham said:
I'm back. Splitting the "authority" column into individual authors does make quite a difference! In particular Hartert had a lot of shared publications.

All taxa, top 10:

1 Hartert 848
2 Sclater, PL 794
3 Linnaeus 738
4 Gould 676
5 Sharpe 577
6 Reichenow 473
7 Vieillot 466
8 Ridgway 437
9 Temminck 431
10 Gmelin, JF 421

Species-level taxa only:

1 Linnaeus 718
2 Sclater, PL 465
3 Gould 417
4 Vieillot 399
5 Gmelin, JF 369
6 Temminck 365
7 Salvin 242
8 Lafresnaye 234
9 Sharpe 230
10 Bonaparte 203

This still isn't completely accurate as the spreadsheet data almost always uses the ampersand character & to separate two names in an authority, but occasionally uses the comma. So for example there's "(Rothschild, Hartert & Kleinschmidt, O, 1897)" in one cell. Splitting on the & yields "Rothschild, Hartert" and "Kleinschmidt, O" as the authors, which is wrong, but splitting on the & and comma yields "Rothschild" and "Hartert" and "Kleinschmidt" and "O", which is also wrong.

Interesting - and I can see that this isn't straightforward! I think it is best to count species group names (species and subspecies), since the ranks of these are frequently altered by taxonomists. The current trend seems to be to elevate subspecies to species rank. Wallace described most of his taxa as species, but about two-thirds were subsequently 'downgraded' to subspecies - and in recent years several have been 'upgraded' to species again!

Paul Clapham · Mar 21, 2018

James Jobling said:
Can you reveal who are the top 10? I might try to incorporate your findings into the Key (duly acknowledged, of course).

But you might prefer to use HBW as the source, rather than IOC, wouldn't you? HBW's authority information is publicly available on the web, it's true, but accessing it and summarizing it is much more difficult than accessing it from a spreadsheet.

Paul Clapham · Mar 21, 2018

Megaloblatta said:
I think it is best to count species group names (species and subspecies), since the ranks of these are frequently altered by taxonomists. The current trend seems to be to elevate subspecies to species rank. Wallace described most of his taxa as species, but about two-thirds were subsequently 'downgraded' to subspecies - and in recent years several have been 'upgraded' to species again!

Yes, I'd agree with that. And beyond that there's the issue of whether to count extinct species...

Alfred Russel Wallace - A Very Important Ornithologist (1 Viewer)

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