BirdForum is the net's largest birding community dedicated to wild birds and birding, and is absolutely FREE!

Register for an account to take part in lively discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mysticete" data-source="post: 1559254" data-attributes="member: 67784">anyone want to place bets on which of these will be split and which will notMy guess is Pacific Wren will be a sure thingWoodhouse's and Sumichrast Scrub-Jays I doubt will be split, since only one gene was sampled and the AOU prefers other data being brought into species proposals, i.e. playback experiments, hybridization studies, etc.  The only way I think this split will be accepted is to accommodate the Island Scrub-Jay situation, and if it is split I think Woodhouse's may be split and Sumichrast will not be.South Hills Crossbill could go either way.  The evidence is good that they should be treated as a different species, even under BSC.  I can see it not going through though on the reasoning that AOU might want to deal with the Crossbill situation all at once, and not piece meal.  I think a lot of taxonomists are quite scared of dealing with Crossbill, and with good reason!  I also wonder if this would go through how the ABA will treat it.  Fea's and Zino's are currently treated as different species but the same "tick" based on difficulty to ID.  I can see the Red Crossbills group being treated the same way.</blockquote>