New Zealand Plover (1 Viewer)

Barth, Matschiner & Robertson 2013. Phylogenetic position and subspecies divergence of the endangered New Zealand Dotterel (Charadrius obscurus). PLoS ONE 8(10): e78068. [article] [pdf]

Wiersma 1996 (HBW 3).

I like New Zealand Plover, ie rainbird rather than New Zealand Dotterel, ie stupidbird. The earliest English name I could find was Dusky Plover.

I should've made the thread title 'New Zealand/Red-breasted/Dusky Plover/Dotterel'.

...and perhaps Tūturiwhatu/Pukunui/Kūkuruatu (ref Avibase).

Actually a quick read of this paper will demonstrate one reason that all this pedantry about English names is so misguided. It shows (as a number of papers have before) that the genus Charadrius is actually polyphyletic and that getting all worked up about whether a bird is a dotterel or a plover based on some out of date hypothesis of phylogeny is a waste of time. Sure the Eurasian Dotterel is considered to be in the other clade in the hypothesis outlined in this paper but that would mean that things like Semipalmated and Ringed Plover should actually be called dotterels (if you follow IOC rules about scientific names equating to English names). Sure if you follow these daft rules then only members of the clade that includes Charadrius obscurus should be called plovers but so what...

Remember these are all just testable hypotheses. Perhaps one day when every single bird has its complete mitochondrial and nucleic genomes sequenced and we understand how genes are expressed and we have a computer capable of comparing each of the genomes (containing 1.5 billion base pairs) of the 50,000 or so described bird taxa - then we will have a genetic hypothesis resembling the true evolutionary pathway but until then these things can and will change every time someone publishes a new paper...Does this mean English as well as scientific names should? As Scientific names will and do reflect phylogenetic hypotheses English (and Spanish and Bulgarian and...) should stay the same!

Changing English names everytime a new paper comes out is so idiotic it is pretty much the definition of futility!

A far more interesting issue on a forum dedicated to Bird Taxonomy and Nomenclature might be what other names are available for these newly hypothesised clades and where divisions might be drawn. Since there has been a precedent set by setting up a sub-forum on Etymology a second sub-forum could be established (that I would never read) discussing the utterly futile subject of what name the English IOC is discussing changing this week!

Kuiornis said:

Changing English names everytime a new paper comes out is so idiotic it is pretty much the definition of futility!

Click to expand...

Current state of play...

• IOC: New Zealand Plover
• HBW & H&M4: Red-breasted Plover
• BirdLife & OSNZ: New Zealand Dotterel
• eBird/Clements: Red-breasted Dotterel

It's all about consumer choice (or increasing the number of birds on the NZ list...?).

I personally call it Dotterel....but could easily live with Plover. What I couldn't call it is a 'Red-breasted' anything, purely because it steals the bird's geographic uniqueness

IOC Update Diary:
Oct 26 Accept subspecies of New Zealand Plover

Kuiornis said:

Changing English names everytime a new paper comes out is so idiotic it is pretty much the definition of futility!

Click to expand...

A man after my own heart! But I would go even further--

Changing English names for any reason whatsoever is . . .(name your pejorative, there's a huge list to choose from!).

Kuiornis said:

Changing English names everytime a new paper comes out is so idiotic it is pretty much the definition of futility!

Click to expand...

Actually, the definition of futility is basing your use of hyphens on the latest taxonomic paper...

Charadriidae

Richard Klim said:

Barth, Matschiner & Robertson 2013. Phylogenetic position and subspecies divergence of the endangered New Zealand Dotterel (Charadrius obscurus). PLoS ONE 8(10): e78068. [article] [pdf]

Wiersma 1996 (HBW 3).

Click to expand...

TiF Update
October 27
The genus Charadrius has been carved up into Zonibyx, Afroxyechus, Eupoda, Ochthodromus, and of course Charadrius due to the results in Barth et al. (2013). Further, Elseyornis was merged into Thinornis, which also gains the Little Ringed Plover (rather uncertainly). Finally, the New Zealand and Double-banded Plovers have been moved to Anarhynchus from Charadrius. Additional details are in the file.