AOU 2017 Checklist proposals (1 Viewer)

[Nutcracker]

Some mtDNA-based stuff attached.

...

Green is Old World, ochre is New World.

Wow! Thanks!

So best fit is four crossbill species: L. curvirostra (Common Xb) & L. bifasciata (Two-barred Xb) in Old World, and L. minor (Red Xb; Brehm 1846, oldest New World plain-winged Xb name) & L. leucoptera (White-winged Xb) in New World :t:

Any plans to get this published formally? Looks worthwhile to me.

 

[Markus Lagerqvist]

Any plans to get this published formally? Looks worthwhile to me.

Nice! Would be interesting to add som of the East Asian taxa like luzoniensis and meridionalis!

 

[l_raty]

Nice! Would be interesting to add som of the East Asian taxa like luzoniensis and meridionalis!

There is a luzoniensis in Groth's data set.
I would also vastly prefer more pytyopsittacus from the normal range of the form. (I'm not comfortable with Scottish birds.)

 

[Markus Lagerqvist]

There is a luzoniensis in Groth's data set.
I would also vastly prefer more pytyopsittacus from the normal range of the form. (I'm not comfortable with Scottish birds.)

Right, missed that one!

And yes, pytyopsittacus from e.g. Scandinavia would be good.

 

[Kirk Roth]

Right, missed that one!

And yes, pytyopsittacus from e.g. Scandinavia would be good.

And also more sampling from the New World among the Red Crossbills - nearly nothing from the east (Newfoundland would be of interest), Alaska, or Mexico, and more New World samples overall would help clear up the "Colorado-centric" sections.

To answer Laurent and Nutcracker's question, for whatever its worth - I was both right and wrong in my intended answer. I did misinterpret the figure.

To answer Markus's question, they do indeed occur in Twin Falls county, if you believe the eBird data:

http://ebird.org/ebird/map/redcro9?...mr=1-12&bmo=1&emo=12&yr=all&byr=1900&eyr=2017

 

[Nutcracker]

To answer Markus's question, they do indeed occur in Twin Falls county, if you believe the eBird data:

http://ebird.org/ebird/map/redcro9?...mr=1-12&bmo=1&emo=12&yr=all&byr=1900&eyr=2017

And perhaps worth looking for too in that range of hills just over the Utah border? Or do squirrels occur there? Lodgepole Pine does occur there, so the habitat is there, if squirrel-free.

 

[lewis20126]

Wow! Thanks!

So best fit is four crossbill species: L. curvirostra (Common Xb) & L. bifasciata (Two-barred Xb) in Old World, and L. minor (Red Xb; Brehm 1846, oldest New World plain-winged Xb name) & L. leucoptera (White-winged Xb) in New World :t:

Any plans to get this published formally? Looks worthwhile to me.

Yes, very fine work. It all seems fairly logical - agree that Scandinavian Parrot would be helpful - perhaps that will reveal a surprise. Interesting to see no obvious separation of North African, Balearic or Luzon birds. And 'Scottish Crossbill' seems comprehensively buried by this, surely.

cheers, alan

 

[Nutcracker]

And also to get the huge-billed, deep purple-pink crossbill I saw in the Pirin Mts in Bulgaria a few years ago . . . looked very 'Parroty' and with a Parrot-like call, too :t:

 

[Mysticete]

And perhaps worth looking for too in that range of hills just over the Utah border? Or do squirrels occur there? Lodgepole Pine does occur there, so the habitat is there, if squirrel-free.

I believe this habitat is all contiguous and squirrel free

 

[Bismarck Honeyeater]

It seems that Cassia Crossbill is being drowned at birth. One of the shortest lived 'species' on record?

Why was this information not taken into consideration (or was it, and there are other factors that were taken into account) before it's recent elevation to speicesdom?

And is it likely that IOC will take Laurent's presentation on board?

 

[Frank Gill]

It seems that Cassia Crossbill is being drowned at birth. One of the shortest lived 'species' on record?

Why was this information not taken into consideration (or was it, and there are other factors that were taken into account) before it's recent elevation to speicesdom?

And is it likely that IOC will take Laurent's presentation on board?

There is good stuff in the pipeline.
We'll wait

 

[Mysticete]

Again....as I have already stated...AOU/AOS does not used the phylogenetic species concept. Which if you are arguing on the basis of the tree Laurent posted, is the species concept you are using.

Their is fairly solid evidence, as PRESENTED IN THE PROPOSAL, that Cassia Crossbill acts as a good biological species where sympatric with other crossbills. That it's embedded within Red Crossbill is irrelevant under the BSC.

 

[Kratter]

Maybe a small detail, but I'm still curious to the statement that it's endemic to Cassia County, Idaho. Is there anyone familier with the South Hills range (I'm not) that can bring clarity to this? Is the forest vegetation different on the Cassia County side of the range compared to the Twin Falls County side of the range? Or is it actually endemic to Cassia AND Twin Falls counties?

Our (AOS NACC) Notes for the crossbill read:
Although the English name South Hills Crossbill was used in the description, Cassia Crossbill more accurately describes the distribution of this species, which is endemic to Cassia County, Idaho, and is more succinct and less confusing (C. W. Benkman, in litt.)

 

[Markus Lagerqvist]

Our (AOS NACC) Notes for the crossbill read:
Although the English name South Hills Crossbill was used in the description, Cassia Crossbill more accurately describes the distribution of this species, which is endemic to Cassia County, Idaho, and is more succinct and less confusing (C. W. Benkman, in litt.)

Yes, that statment made me curious since South Hills is divided into two counties, and if you can trust the e-bird data it does seem like it's not endemic to Cassia County, but occurs at least also in Twin Falls County. But any evidence of the opposite would be interesting to see. |=)|

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

Some mtDNA-based stuff attached.

The sequences marked "Groth" in the tree are from GenBank, where they were deposited by Jeff Groth in 1999 with references to a work "in press" that never materialized. References to these data have been published in the literature (see e.g. Parchman et al. 2006 [pdf]), but no actual analyses, I think. These are long sequences (~4250bp long, encompassing cyt-b, nd6, the entire control region, 12s rRNA, and five intervening/flanking tRNAs), but there are few of them (13 Loxia sp., 10 of which belonged to the plain-winged complex).
The single Michigan sequence marked "Lerner" is from an entire mt genome that was produced to act as one of the outgroups in Lerner et al. 2011 [pdf] [supp.info], a study that addressed Drepanidini. I cropped this sequence to use only the part homologous to Groth's sequences.
The sequences marked "Piertney" are from Scotland and from Piertney et al. 2001 [pdf here]; I reconstructed them using the single sequence deposited in GenBank and Table 2 of the paper. These are ~1140bp long (thus quite shorter than Groth's), covering most of the control region.
The sequences marked "Questiau" were published by Questiau et al. 1999 [pdf here]. These are still a bit shorter, ~715bp long, also of the control region, and overlapped almost entirely by the fragment sequenced by Piertney et al. 2001. The two terminals I have labelled Loxia sinesciuris were of course not presented as such in 1999; they were published as "Endemic race? South Hills, Idaho".
To these I have added a handfull of cardueline mt genomes as outgroups, also cropped to match the fragment sequenced by Groth.

Green is Old World, ochre is New World.

Should we consider pytyopsittacus and scotica as subspecies of curvirostra ?

Same for megaplaga, subspecies of leucoptera or species status for bifasciata ?

 

[l_raty]

Should we consider pytyopsittacus and scotica as subspecies of curvirostra ?

These three are broadly sympatric, which is problematic to make them subspecies in the usual sense of the term.

 

[Kirk Roth]

These three are broadly sympatric, which is problematic to make them subspecies in the usual sense of the term.

Finches are extra special - Scots and Parrots may fall better under "types" or "forms" or "morphs."

I wouldn't be surprised if someone found someday that Common/Red Crossbill types are related to "supergenes" similar to Redpolls.

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

These three are broadly sympatric, which is problematic to make them subspecies in the usual sense of the term.

Boyd didn't try to understand, he demoted them 😂

However, can the split of bifasciata from leucoptera be justified?

 

[gusasp]

Boyd didn't try to understand, he demoted them 😂

However, can the split of bifasciata from leucoptera be justified?

Certainly! In Sweden, they already are since 2018. I'm surprised this hasn't been dealt with by other authorities! Differences in size, morphology, plumage and song plus leucoptera closer to Hispaniolan Crossbill. Slam dunk if you ask me! See for instance:

• Elmberg, J. 1993. Song Differences Between North American and European White-winged Crossbills (Loxia leucoptera). Auk 110: 38.
• Parchman, T. L., Benkman, C. W. och Britch, S. C. 2006. Patterns of genetic variation in the adaptive radiation of New World crossbills (Aves: Loxia). Mol. Ecol. 15: 1873–1889.

 

[jurek]

I wouldn't be surprised if someone found someday that Common/Red Crossbill types are related to "supergenes" similar to Redpolls.

This is an interesting suggestion, because crossbills and redpolls are each others closest relatives. This might be readily checked as there are some genomic studies on both.