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BOURC TSC 5th report (1 Viewer)

Richard Klim

Richard Klim

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The BOURC Taxonomic Sub-Committee's 5th report on taxonomic recommendations for British birds is now available at:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121420075/PDFSTART

Ibis 150/4 (Oct 2008) also includes a paper (Bolton et al) which names Monteiro's Storm-petrel (the Azores summer-breeding band-rumped storm-petrel) as Oceanodroma monteiroi.

Richard (with thanks to Max Berlijn for notification)
 
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Richard Klim said:
Ibis 150/4 (Oct 2008) also includes a paper (Bolton et al) which names Monteiro's Storm-petrel (the Azores summer-breeding band-rumped storm-petrel) as Oceanodroma monteiroi.
Click to expand...

The article by Guy Dutson for the description of Zosterops gibbsi, the new species of White-eye from Vanikoro (Solomon Islands) is included as well.
 
Very useful indeed - thanks!
Incidentally, I noticed that since the change from Blackwell-Synergy to Wiley Interscience, several of the open-access papers from Ibis had become subscription/payment only. I had a somewhat lengthy email conversation with someone at Wiley and they've now restored the open-access articles.
 
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colonelboris said:
Incidentally, I noticed that since the change from Blackwell-Synergy to Wiley Interscience, several of the open-access papers from Ibis had become subscription/payment only.
Click to expand...

Yes, there seem to be some problems. I noticed yesterday that the 1st, 2nd & 3rd BOURC-TSC reports, and the guidelines for assigning species rank, are still offered from the BOU website (via The British List page), but free access is now denied when redirected to Wiley InterScience. I e-mailed BOU about the problem earlier today.

Richard
 
Richard Klim said:
Ibis 150/4 (Oct 2008) also includes a paper (Bolton et al) which names Monteiro's Storm-petrel (the Azores summer-breeding band-rumped storm-petrel) as Oceanodroma monteiroi.
Click to expand...

Who cares about a "species" which differs by nothing external, little genetically and nobody can identify? Just "species" became a wastebin, like "race" was before.
 
In quite a few examples, the real interest in finding out if there were any useful external differences did not start until the two forms were declared two different species. Could it be that this example is the same?

Niels
 
Who cares about a "species" which differs by nothing external, little genetically and nobody can identify? Just "species" became a wastebin, like "race" was before.
Click to expand...

If they're separate species, then the birds can identify - which is really the point, isn't it? 'Species' isn't a category that exists just for human identification & list-keeping; it's a conceptualization of our understanding of real evolutionary processes.
 
jurek said:
Who cares about a "species" which differs by nothing external, little genetically and nobody can identify? Just "species" became a wastebin, like "race" was before.
Click to expand...

The newly described species differs significantly in several physical features including degree of fork in tail, width of white band on the rump, time of moult, body weight and relative wing size - many of these features differ to the degree that, given good views and experience of the species, identification of a bird at sea should be possible! The two species also differ radically in vocalisation. Isotope analysis of feathers suggest there is a year-round difference in diet. Genetic differences and genetic isolation show that there is no "cross breeding" between this and other populations of "Madeiran Storm-petrel".
Perhaps it would be wise to read some of the literature on the subject before you relegate these species to the wastebin!
 
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Snapdragyn said:
If they're separate species, then the birds can identify - which is really the point, isn't it? 'Species' isn't a category that exists just for human identification & list-keeping; it's a conceptualization of our understanding of real evolutionary processes.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Well said.

Graham
 
Richard Klim said:
The BOURC Taxonomic Sub-Committee's 5th report on taxonomic recommendations for British birds is now available at:
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/121420075/PDFSTART
Click to expand...

I was a bit intrigued by this remark in the report:
"Wink et al. (2002. Charadrius 38: 239–245) found no sequence differences between Black-throated and Pacific Loons, and low variation in general among the loons; however, Brown et al. (2008. BMC Biology 6: 6) reported (unexpectedly) that arctica and pacifica are not sister taxa, based on phylogenetic analysis of 4594 bp of mtDNA."
(For any interested soul, Wink et al. (2002) can be accessed here: http://www.uni-heidelberg.de/institute/fak14/ipmb/phazb/pdf-files/2002 Pdf.Pubwink/26.2002.pdf, and Brown et al. (2008) is here: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7007/6/6)

Had a slightly closer look at the data, and ended up with what follows... The Gavia stellata sequence in Wink et al. 2002, based on what they give in their Tab. 2 (p. 242), is directly contradicted by three congruent cytochrome b sequences deposited in GenBank by three different authors (Stanley & Harrison 1999: AF158250; Slack et al. 2006: NC_007007; Brown et al. 2008: EU166996). These three sequences are significantly more divergent from other Gavia spp. than what Wink et al. suggest (8-9%, vs. 4-5%), thus the "low variation in general among the loons" that they found is almost certainly an underestimation. The Wink et al. "stellata" sequence is fully congruent with one sequence deposited in GenBank, labelled as G. arctica (García-Moreno et al. 2003: AY139635 - this is one of the sequences used by Brown et al.)...

L -
 
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Just purchased the new Birds of Lancashire, an excellent read,interesting record of a Blue Jay seen in a Merseyside garden which is still being considered by the committe after 5 years,obviously as a first for Britain it often takes a bit of time,be interesting to see how this record turns out,obviously is one, and being almost wholly restricted to North America not sure how common it would be in captivity,probably just end up in cat D I suppose..
 
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