Ardeidae (1 Viewer)

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

The uncompressed data includes close to 5,000 files, for a total of about 4 Gb, it's not something that can be attached to an email.
If you have a relatively recent version of Windows (I assume you use Windows, otherwise the problem would not even occur), it seems you should be able to extract .tar.gz files without installing third-party software, using the command line -- see the first procedure described here. (I don't have a computer running Windows at hand to test if this really works, though.)
Most of it is genetic sequences (.phylip, .nex, .fasta files) and individual gene trees (.tre files). Can I ask what you want to do with it, exactly ? Is there a part of it in which you would be particularly interested ?

I wanted phylogenetic trees. I saw the phylip format, I don't even know what it is.

I downloaded 7-zip as recommended to me by The Fern. There are more than 3000 trees 😐

 

[Snapdragyn]

The cox1 distance between alba (n=8, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Japan) and egretta (n=12, Argentina, Suriname, Salvador, Mexico, USA) is 2.4%.
The cox1 distance between Asian (in BOLD: n=13, S Korea, Japan; additional seqs in GenBank: n=6, China, India) and Australian (n=1) modesta is about 2%.

The cox1 distance between modesta and the [alba + egretta] clade is 4.2-5.2%.

For comparison, the cox1 distances between species in the Ardea cinerea / herodias / cocoi complex are 1.3-1.4%.

If Asian vs. Australian modesta were to be split, is there an available name for the split taxon (which offhand I would presume would need to be the Australian birds, but I haven't confirmed the type locality of modesta)?

Edit: And delving into answering my own question, there is a maoriensis listed on Avibase, if that's a valid name.

Edit 2: Looking at a map, though, the distribution of modesta shows no clear breaks. I wonder if that cox1 distance could represent ends of a cline?

 

[l_raty]

FWIW:
Ardea modesta Gray 1831 The zoological miscellany - Biodiversity Heritage Library is from India.
Herodias syrmatophorus Gould 1846 v.6 (1848) - The birds of Australia - Biodiversity Heritage Library is from Australia.
Herodias alba maoriana Mathews & Iredale 1913 ser.10:v.1=no.1-4 (1913) - Ibis - Biodiversity Heritage Library is from New Zealand.

 

[Xenospiza]

Thanks Laurent for the detective work ! And the genetic tree provides great info.

It would seem that there are about similar arguments for splitting Intermediate Egret and Great Egret: Considerable genetic distance, morphological differences and some vocal differences. Relatively strong cases I would think (with still some genetic data lacking here and there).

In the case of Great Egret, a split into 3 (rather than 2) species seems the better approach when integrating all arguments.
(Unless there would be clear morphological or vocal differences, a further split of the Australian birds seems premature)

The alarm call of Great Egret seems to get deeper the further southeast you go. At least all Old World birds have a rattling call, but it would be interesting to know if there was a clean break between high and low pitch somewhere.
American birds sound completely different and should be split without hesitation.

 

[Peter Boesman]

The alarm call of Great Egret seems to get deeper the further southeast you go. At least all Old World birds have a rattling call, but it would be interesting to know if there was a clean break between high and low pitch somewhere.
American birds sound completely different and should be split without hesitation.

See conclusion in my note on Great Egret vocalizations mentioned above:

<<Subspecies egretta apparently doesn’t utter the rattle call, which is the commonest call in Old World races (or it is uttered so fast that it looks identical to the "rraah" call). The vocabulary of egretta consists mainly of the “rraah” call and the nasal call. While these two call types are also uttered by Old World races, especially the nasal call is rather an exception, and never reaches the extreme nasal rendering of egretta (see above sonograms). There is thus a clear difference in vocalizations. (The total absence of a homologous call could be given a score of 4 using Tobias criteria for the largest possible difference, or alternatively pace of the “commonest call” for egretta could be compared with other races, also leading to a score of 3–4).

Differences among the Old World races are less obvious, and a more detailed analysis with more samples is required. It would seem, however, that modesta has a rattle call that is clearly lower-pitched with energy packed in the lower frequencies, unlike the nominate which is noticeably higher-pitched (estimated score 2). Race melanorhynchos may be intermediate, but recordings of this taxon are too few to draw any conclusions. Similar differences may be true in respect of the “rraah” call.

I conclude that the voice of egretta especially stands apart, while other races show smaller differences, which may nevertheless be statistically significant. >>

 

[Mysticete]

The alarm call of Great Egret seems to get deeper the further southeast you go. At least all Old World birds have a rattling call, but it would be interesting to know if there was a clean break between high and low pitch somewhere.
American birds sound completely different and should be split without hesitation.

Although are differences in alarm call going to influence conspecific recognition? Which is really why folks are interested in vocalizations, although differences can at least suggest differences in evolutionary trajectories between populations.

 

[Kirk Roth]

Although are differences in alarm call going to influence conspecific recognition? Which is really why folks are interested in vocalizations, although differences can at least suggest differences in evolutionary trajectories between populations.

Great Egrets have fairly energetic courtship displays, so I would expect that would be the more fertile ground for BSC split arguments. I agree that alarm call dialects may have geographic variation but not necessarily any utility toward teasing out species limits. But even their pair-bonding calls are learned and each pair modifies/individualizes their vocalizations according to Birds of the World.

I think the coloration of the bare parts would be more important to the birds than vocalizations might be. They change during the breeding season, so we know they mean something. We need to know if the differences in lore, bill, and leg color mean as much to the birds as they do to us.