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Message: <blockquote data-quote="l_raty" data-source="post: 1193210" data-attributes="member: 24811">Actually, Paynes' study is what led the AOU to lump striated and green herons in 1976... They re-split them in 1993, after Paynes' conclusions had been questioned in a re-analysis by Monroe & Browning, published the previous year. More recently, Hayes (2002) took a third look at the same data; he largely confirmed Paynes' findings and concluded that most of Monroe & Browning's criticisms were unjustified. He did not recommend re-lumping, though. (Same qualitative conclusions about what is going on, but different species concept.) This split a borderline case at best, IMHO.If anybody wants a more comprehensive summary, please just ask.For B. (s.) sundevalli, you can see the SACC proposal: <a href="http://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCprop15.html" target="_blank">http://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCprop15.html</a>As suggested by Niels' message, sundevalli is retained as a separate species in the last edition of Howard & Moore - with a footnote reading "Implicitly recognised by A.O.U. (1998: 45)". But this implicit recognition has since been very explicitly retracted in the 44th Supplement to the AOU Check-list, so this justification could probably not be invoked anymore.PS - Rasmus: Yes, indeed I meant the ear-coverts - wrong translation on my side, sorry. You are also right that Payne only used the neck color in his index. But this picture is a front view, which is potentially the most misleading angle, and birds showing gray on the face usually also have a rather gray hind-neck; I was merely pointing at something that, to me, seemed unusual for a typical virescens.I'm not at all comfortable with assessing precise shades from jpegs shown on the web. When I compare pictures of birds scored by Floyd Hayes to his picture of the vouchers, I quite systematically reach a higher score than him, which makes me suspect the way the vouchers show on my screen may not be accurate. Hence my questions...</blockquote>

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