Hydrobates (2 Viewers)

[Peter Kovalik]

Proposal (829) to SACC

Merge Oceanodroma into Hydrobates

PASSED (8 June 2020)

 

[Peter Kovalik]

IOC Updates Diary Feb 11

Merge Oceanodroma into Hydrobates.

 

[Daniel Parker]

Honest question from a non-scientist: John Boyd treats Hydrobatidae in 4 genera, which I like, but leaves furcatus in Hydrobates. Why not leave a monotypic Oceanodroma as sister to Hydrobates? From what little I know of these two (and I have no field experience), furcatus certainly seems very distinct from pelagicus (larger size and very different calls, even more divergent from pelagicus than Cymochorea or Thalobata species, in my opinion anyway). As I'm blind, it's possible I'm overlooking plumage similarities. The only other explanation that makes sense to me is that the divergence times between pelagicus and furcatus are more akin to those within Cymochorea, for example, than to those between the broad clades...

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

Honest question from a non-scientist: John Boyd treats Hydrobatidae in 4 genera, which I like, but leaves furcatus in Hydrobates. Why not leave a monotypic Oceanodroma as sister to Hydrobates? From what little I know of these two (and I have no field experience), furcatus certainly seems very distinct from pelagicus (larger size and very different calls, even more divergent from pelagicus than Cymochorea or Thalobata species, in my opinion anyway). As I'm blind, it's possible I'm overlooking plumage similarities. The only other explanation that makes sense to me is that the divergence times between pelagicus and furcatus are more akin to those within Cymochorea, for example, than to those between the broad clades...

Personally, I have chosen the option with 5 genera (Hydrobates, Cymochorea, Halocyptena, Oceanodroma and Thalobata)

 

[jts1882]

Some taxonomists try and avoid monotypic genera.

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

Some taxonomists try and avoid monotypic genera.

We can't escape monotypic genera, so they might as well get used to it

 

[l_raty]

This is not published material yet, but looking at the distances in the trees in Estandía 2019 / Estandía et al 2021, splitting the group might be much more consistent with what is done in other Procellariiformes. The distance between furcata and pelagicus seems larger than any distances within any currently recognised non-Hydrobatidae precellariiform genus; it also seems to be larger than any distance within, e.g., Fulmarinae (5 genera) or Diomedeidae (4 genera).

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

Estandía 2019 /

Not found

 

[l_raty]

Not found

It works for me -- both on my PC and on my phone.

(Maybe your browser is trying to redirect the http to an https that doesn't exist ? If so, you can try switching to another browser, or switching to another device, or perhaps acceding the link through a public proxy, such as ProxySite.com - Free Web Proxy Site .)

The link is to a page dedicated to Estandía's thesis (2019 : "GENOME-WIDE PHYLOGENETIC RECONSTRUCTION FOR PROCELLARIIFORM SEABIRDS IS ROBUST TO MOLECULAR RATE VARIATION").
Here is a direct link to the thesis in .pdf format, should this help (but I doubt it) : http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13392/1/20191119_AE_MRes_Thesis_final.pdf?DDD1+

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

It works for me -- both on my PC and on my phone.

(Maybe your browser is trying to redirect the http to an https that doesn't exist ? If so, you can try switching to another browser, or switching to another device, or perhaps acceding the link through a public proxy, such as ProxySite.com - Free Web Proxy Site .)

I'm on cellphone and I have this message

The requested URL /13392/ was not found on this server.

Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at etheses.dur.ac.uk Port 443

 

[Daniel Philippe]

acceding the link through a public proxy, such as ProxySite.com - Free Web Proxy Site .)

This works

 

[l_raty]

The requested URL /13392/ was not found on this server.

Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS) Server at etheses.dur.ac.uk Port 443

Yes, I get precisely the same error when I replace the "http://" in the address with "https://". Your browser is doing it -- it redirects you automatically to the https protocol, in an attempt to make your browsing safer.

 

[Jim LeNomenclatoriste]

Yes, I get precisely the same error when I replace the "http://" in the address with "https://". Your browser is doing it -- it redirects you automatically to the https protocol, in an attempt to make your browsing safer.

If you can download the thesis, send it to me by mail

 

[Daniel Parker]

Nice to see my instincts may have been correct about this...

I think I would like at least some monotypic genera if I were a taxonomist. When it comes to genera I'm a splitter - I find myself not liking genera that have more than one identifiable group of species. If the whole point of genera is to show relationships and also distinctiveness, why elide the differences by lumping? I like a monotypic Oceanodroma next to Hydrobates because it shows that these two are more closely related to each other than to the rest of their family, but also that they are very distinct from each other. Despite my hobby of figuring out what a species might be called if it had its own monotypic genus, I don't really advocate for that. I'm not always sure where to draw the line - I like some large genera like Turdus, Zosterops, even the expanded Setophaga, because they show how one nominal group radiated out into a large number of somewhat similar species...

Ok, back on topic.