Omani Owl (1 Viewer)

[DLane]

I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion here about the sloppy taxonomy involved with the description of "Strix omanensis." I won't even go into the lack of any tangible evidence for the holotype (which is itself an issue of great oversight). But the fact that the authors have played down the importance of nomenclature and the confused history behind the name 'Strix butleri' and to what population it truly applies is a looming issue showing how poorly reasoned, researched, and executed this paper was.

I suspect that the authors are correct in their assertion that they have a taxon different from what everyone calls 'Strix butleri' on their hands... However, given that the name 'butleri' was applied to a specimen received by Hume in Pakistan, but that it very well may have come from the Arabian Peninsula (as per Goodman and Sabry 1984), seems to raise a red flag as far as to what population that name is truly best applied! The new Omani bird is the closest population to Pakistan (assuming S. butleri doesn't or didn’t actually occur in Pakistan or Iran), so it would be immensely important to show why that name cannot be placed on the Omani bird before naming that population. How could Robb et al. wave this off so easily? In their paper, they state of the holotype for butleri and the two other specimens at Tring:

"all three show horizontal bars on the underparts, a feature not shown in Omani Owl, and just a few short longitudinal lines. The three specimens of Hume’s in Tring differ from each other in colour (the one from ‘Palestine’ being palest and the one from Jeddah darkest) and markings (the type specimen showing a few short longitudinal dark lines on the underparts). The differences in ground colour of the body feathers between the three specimens illustrate the considerable variation in Hume’s described by Goodman & Sabry (1984)"

But they really don't give any further evidence that the holotype of butleri isn't of the Omani population, and Goodman and Sabry's statement that butleri shows a lot of variation (with which Robb et al. agree) would suggest that what they photographed of the 'holotype' (and, I would add, *only*) Omani bird would easily fit within that variation. In addition, how can anyone with experience photographing owls at night with flash consider with any seriousness that the resultant photos would be trustworthy with regard to color saturation? Nighttime flash photography infamously washes out colors and results in the subject appearing paler and less saturated than the true colors would appear under daylight conditions. Considering over half of the characters put forth by Robb et al. in their Table 4 as separating Omani Owl from Hume's have to do with saturation of buff (and in nearly every case, it appears that the Omani bird is less saturated so as to appear whiter or grayer, which is *exactly* what I would predict based on nighttime flash photography vs daylight conditions), and that they state that they have only N=1 for the number of individuals of Omani Owl photographed, it is absurd to even consider their morphological characters as valid for diagnosing the bird! Of all the characters put forth, I’d say the wing pattern may be the only one that really seems to be of value, but Robb et al. didn’t even mention the wing pattern on the holotype of butleri! Wow, but the lack of scientific rigor in this description is quite impressive.

Of course if there was some way to do, I don't know, ancient DNA testing on the holotype of butleri and compare it to sequences from Hume’s Owl and the Omani bird... oh but wait, there's a small problem with that idea, isn't there?

 

[Mysticete]

The elephant in the room is the lack of holotype.

I suspect a lot of the more taxonomy-focused people agree with you, but anytime specimen collecting is mentioned here, it raises a giant #%#%-storm, and I know personally I am just too tired right now to deal with it...

 

[thomasdonegan]

Following Dan's, the thing I found most strange about this paper was the extraordinary length of it, especially on the history of the discovery and diagnosis from unrelated species. I doubt most other journals would publish so much information on such matters in a description.

Without wanting to start Morgan's storm, if these authors had published a paper drawing attention to a vocally divergent population of owl, and presenting all their interesting vocal data and plumage differences, people would think it is an interesting paper or not say so much about it. Naming populations is nothing really to do with science, testing of hypotheses or even describing the biological world around us, but a socio-cultural act relevant to communication. When people name organisms under the Linnean system as well as drawing attention to vocal and plumage variations in a paper, they find everyone takes note and gets upset at disliked aspects of their papers. I have never fully understood the distinction or rationale for this, but it has resulted in the past in unusual approaches in my own work: e.g. describing but not naming some populations in scientific papers. In particular if the variations do not give rise to a "slam dunker" under every species or subspecies concept known to man then one group of the community will get upset, or if there is a risk that someone somewhere might get offended if they think they ought to have been invited to participate as an author, it's better just not bothering engaging in this socio-cultural process. Check out the 4 described but unnamed tapaculos in my 2008 paper on Scytalopus with Jorge Avendano ...

TD

 

[Xenospiza]

I think the article tells half the story with its thorough description of sounds, which could be expected from this team (none of whom is a taxonomist). Quite a few owls have been split on vocal evidence, although this does not answer the question to which population the butleri holotype, which we cannot know the call of, belonged.

That answer could have been provided by a "sequence" I guess, although that would still be a meagre base.
In contrast, the article on Tyto almae (a single specimen collected and a sequence produced) is lacking any description of sounds (as none were ever recorded) and does not come across as satisfactory to me either.
You would need multiple birds for any meaningful treatment, which with a grand total of seven known individuals sounds like a pretty impossible task.

It may be that part of the rush to describe the bird was the fact that they want to publish a book on Western Palearctic owls next year or so. From George Sangster’s story on the process to get Otus jolandae described (now that is an article I like), they could have known that a severe delay would be on the cards if they needed to acquire a specimen.
But as a Dutch twitcher (and no taxonomist), I hope my reservations will not be taken personally. I still think it is a great find.

JanHein

 

[DLane]

The Robb et al Omani Owl description should have been a paper showing that they had found vocal evidence for a new taxon (species?), but leaving it unnamed. That would have been a valuable article, and Dutch Birding would have been a good journal in which to have published it. My main gripe is the way by which they named the taxon, which was a "quick and dirty" method that I hope will not influence others who may be considering naming taxa.

It may be that part of the rush to describe the bird was the fact that they want to publish a book on Western Palearctic owls next year or so. From George Sangster’s story on the process to get Otus jolandae described (now that is an article I like), they could have known that a severe delay would be on the cards if they needed to acquire a specimen.

That is not how I read it. Based on the paper, it seems that their hurry was to get the bird listed for conservation. In essence, to stone-wall the possibility to collect a specimen that would be able to settle the questions that they failed to answer regarding the taxonomy of the new bird with respect to the name "butleri" and the better known "Hume's Owl". I highly doubt that the seven individuals they found are truly the only seven in existence (from their description of the habitat, and how difficult it was for them to enter it, and how quietly the owls vocalized... I can only come to the conclusion that they only visited a fraction of the range and encountered a small portion of the birds), and their argument that this population is truly as unique and worthy of strict conservation would stand to gain more support by a molecular analysis with comparisons to the holotype of butleri and other Hume's populations.

As an aside, I think that many of the 'splits' that have happened in the owl world (at least in the New World) based on perceived vocal variation are often pure hogwash, particularly in Glaucidium and Megascops. Don't get me wrong, I believe strongly that voice is a very important character to use to determine taxonomy in nocturnal birds (more so than in many diurnal, I suspect), certainly more so than plumage, but many splits are made on hearsay, ridiculously small sample sizes, comparisons of what are likely non-homologous sounds, and pure unsupported conjecture. The taxonomy published in the Koenig et al. Pica Press Owls book (both editions) is full of such poorly-supported splits: the South American Megascops guatimalae group (as far as I can tell, vermiculatum, napensis, and roraimae all sound about the same), splitting M. cooperi and M. lambi (I have yet to hear any evidence that these are anything but identical in voice), splitting Glaucidium jardinii and bolivianum (this is just pace, why isn't that a subspecies-level character?), and where to draw the line within Strix (Ciccaba) virgata (as it turns out, Koenig et al completely botched the taxonomy they employed in their book in this last case). If you're going to do this, do it right: with reasonable sample sizes representing the breadth of the vocal repertoire, vouchered identifications, and well-researched arguments published in a reviewed journal... not using authoritative 'field guide taxonomy' like it was still the 1920s.

Returning to the Omani case, I think that the voice section actually was pretty competently laid out by Robb et al, and I applaud them for discovering and studying the population. It's their attempt at performing taxonomy that was poorly done.

 

[Mysticete]

My perspective is going to be different from others, as I am primarily work on fossil mammals. I can definitely say that sometimes the material we have available may suggest a new species, and different research groups will make different calls on it. That's fine and is expected in taxonomy, whether it's extant birds or fossil pinnipeds. Certainly there are oversplitters in may field, but that just gives me more things to argue against in papers. And there are probably some overconservative workers as well, and hey...again more papers.

Personally if you have a reliable holotype with diagnostic characters, adequately describe your new taxon in a peer-reviewed work, and can support it as a new species/subspecies whatever, I think it's fine to go ahead and describe it. Let taxonomic committees hash out the species concepts...as long as your species can be recognized by an accepted concept, I don't see an issue.

But I think in the Omani owl you have a different issue than above. the lack of holotype specimen means that the vocal analysis is probably the only rigorous portion of the paper. This is an entire different issue than petty interfighting or differences in species concepts.

 

[Richard Klim]

It was inevitable that this one would be controversial: lack of holotype, extreme haste to publish, and description in a birdwatchers' magazine (albeit one of the better ones).

Irrespective of the particular merits of this example, it seems that there's an increasing tendency to describe new taxa as species. I suppose it's understandable given that descriptions of new subspecies are typically greeted with a collective "So what?". In contrast, a carefully choreographed announcement of the discovery of a new species is guaranteed to attract instant global interest. And even if the taxon doesn't gain widespread recognition under one of various species concepts, it will probably at least be eternalised as a subspecies anyway. There seems to be nothing to lose from going for gold...

 

[thomasdonegan]

Richard, another issue you are overlooking here is the corruption of the major journals and cliques of research groups which perpetuates this issue. No lesser fools than the editors of the Auk (Loxia sinesciuris), Ibis (Cinclodes espinhacensis) and Condor (Thryophilus sernai) have published the most dodgy of species descriptions. All of these look to me at best like subspecies, or in the case of the crossbill, just another of multiple vocal types not linked to a name. On the other hand, various of the "top" journals will reject MSs for subspecies descriptions on the basis that they are of insufficient interest. The HBW volume is a real mixed bag in this respect, of some obvious new species and others whose differentiation is extraordinarily slight.

When most ornithologists find something exciting they will want to publish it in a "top journal". The alternative of describing a subspecies and therefore having to use Bull BOC - which Thomson Reuters scandalously continues not to give a rating to - or a local journal, is unattractive for many in the academic sector. Result: those with the "right connections" or from the "right research group" can get their dodgy species reviewed by their mates and published in "top journals". Those in a further refined subgroup of the "right research group" can even have their dodgy descriptions sycophantically approved by major ornithological taxonomic committees. Those who are more conservative publish less exaggerated (and hence, intrinsically better) papers in Bull BOC or local journals, often as subspecies, have their research broadly ignored.

 

[thomasdonegan]

The above comment could in part be a prelude to a new tapaculo coming out in a few weeks in Bull BOC as a subspecies, which in my view is a stronger candidate for species rank than any of the above and many other "species" recently published in "top journals". I am personally proud only to submit such a paper to (and publish it in) a journal which is interested in articles on original taxonomic research!

 

[Robert L Jarvis]

Btw, just checked König & Weick 2008 (Owls of the World) and found that it has a completely bizarre range map for Hume's Owl, depicting a distribution throughout N Oman & UAE (!) but completely absent from Dhofar... :eek!:

Strange, I know it was some years ago but I seen Hume's Owl in Israel on the edge of the Negev, presumably it also breeds there. Which suggests to me that Hume's pretty well is extant from Israel to Pakistan so why not in Oman?

 

[Richard Klim]

Hume's Owl

Strange, I know it was some years ago but I seen Hume's Owl in Israel on the edge of the Negev, presumably it also breeds there. Which suggests to me that Hume's pretty well is extant from Israel to Pakistan so why not in Oman?

I was just referring to the erroneous distribution in eastern Arabia depicted by König & Weick, showing it present in the north but absent from the south, contra Jennings 2010 (ABBA) which shows no records from UAE or N Oman. Hume's Owl certainly breeds in Israel (and other parts of the Middle East), but there seems to be no actual evidence of occurrence in Pakistan (or Iran).

 

[Richard Klim]

The above comment could in part be a prelude to a new tapaculo coming out in a few weeks in Bull BOC as a subspecies, which in my view is a stronger candidate for species rank than any of the above and many other "species" recently published in "top journals". I am personally proud only to submit such a paper to (and publish it in) a journal which is interested in articles on original taxonomic research!

Thomas, to be clear, I take a close interest in all avian taxonomic research, irrespective of proposed taxonomic ranks. But it's a fact of life that many in the ornithological community (and all mainstream media) are only really interested in hearing about new species...

 

[thomasdonegan]

Understood, most people on this forum are pretty hardcore taxonomic boffins! (That's a compliment!)

 

[DMW]

Arabian Scops Owl sounds rather like African Scops Owl (to me, at least); on the other hand, (Arabian) Spotted Eagle Owl seemingly has very different vocalisations from (African) Spotted Eagle Owl. It also has a curiously disjunct distribution, with Greyish Eagle Owl sandwiched between the two taxa. Based on my limited knowledge, I think this must be a more or less certain future split...

Robb et al...

The forthcoming Undiscovered owls from The Sound Approach should indeed be fascinating. It's notable that van den Berg 2013 (Dutch Birding bird names) recognises the following taxa as distinct species:

• Tyto (alba) detorta – Cape Verde Barn Owl – Hazevoet 1995, König & Weick 2008
• Athene (noctua) glaux – Lilith Owl (incl 'saharae', indigena, lilith) – Wink 2008
• Otus (senegalensis) pamelae – Arabian Scops Owl – König & Weick 2008, Pons et al 2013

...and (suggestively?) lists the following as "distinct subspecies which have sometimes been considered specifically distinct":

• Tyto alba alba – Pale Western Barn Owl
• Tyto alba guttata – Dark Western Barn Owl
• Tyto alba erlangeri – Desert Barn Owl
• Tyto alba ernesti – Corsican Barn Owl
• Tyto alba gracilirostris – Slender-billed Barn Owl
• Tyto alba schmitzi – Madeira Barn Owl
• Surnia ulula ulula – Northern Hawk-Owl (as distinct from S u caparoch – American Hawk-Owl)
• Athene noctua noctua – Italian (Little) Owl
• Athene noctua vidalii – Little Owl
• Athene glaux indigena – Byzantine Little Owl
• Aegolius funereus funereus – Tengmalm's Owl (as distinct from A f richardsoni – Boreal Owl)
• Otus scops cyprius – Cyprus Scops Owl
• Strix aluco mauritanica – Maghreb Tawny Owl
• Strix uralensis macroura – Carpathian Ural Owl
• Strix nebulosa lapponica – Lapland (Great Grey) Owl
• Bubo bubo interpositus – Byzantine/Aharoni's Eagle-Owl
• Bubo capensis milesi – Arabian Spotted Eagle-Owl
• Bubo zeylonensis semenowi – Turkish Brown Fish Owl

All of the above feature in the list of WP species sound recorded by The Sound Approach. Looking forward to publication...

 

[Mysticete]

Corruption...is a bit of a hyperbole isn't it?

Journals will always be more inclined towards some topics more than others. In Paleontology, due a solid description, phylogeny, or ecological re-evaluation of a crown fossil mammal, even something that revolutionizes our understanding of biogeography, etc into a high impact journal. It will probably not get in. Describe a dinobird, or an archaeocete whale, throw some super speculation and crappy phylogenetic results into the paper, and bam...instead Nature and Science publication.

It is what it is, and it's not a phenomena confined to birds. The same pattern extends to research on extant animals. Discovery of ANY new bird and mammal species/genus is going to be "more sexy" than a new subspecies, since most of the public has never heard that term before, A lot of scientists don't agree on what a subspecies is, and a lot of scientists don't find it a valid or consistent taxonomic rank.

 

[thomasdonegan]

"Corruption" maybe hyperbole, but ultimately any approach which is not rational, consistent and objective has been influenced by another (irrelevant) factor.

 

[jurek]

This is a major mistake of current ornithology: in reality there is a full continuum between species and subspecies, but in ornithology species are given interest, but subspecies are almost ignored. One reason is a decision of BirdLife International to consider only full species and ignore subspecies. This created a strong and completely artificial drive to "make species" because they sell better as publications and as conservation status.

Another mistake is that "all species are equal", so one of multiple closely related species of tapaculos or leaf-warblers has the same importance as a very distinct species eg. Kagu or Kakapo.

Mammalology, for example, mostly avoided this problem. There is no problem in conserving Siberian and South Chinese Tigers separately. Nor is one species of Mus mice or Crocidura shrews treated on an equal level with Asian Elephant or a Dugong.

 

[jurek]

About owls: Strix owl species show big vocal variability - both individual and regional. Compare different sonograms of "Omani" owl or European and West Asian Tawny Owls from the Dutch Birding article.

Also nobody to my knowledge proven that the voice is a good barrier for hybridization in large owls. It is assumed by extension from other birds, eg. small passerines.

Both these further weaken the case of Omani Owl being separate species, unfortunately.

 

[thomasdonegan]

Mammalology, for example, mostly avoided this problem. There is no problem in conserving Siberian and South Chinese Tigers separately. Nor is one species of Mus mice or Crocidura shrews treated on an equal level with Asian Elephant or a Dugong.

Totally agree. Another example is Polar Bear: this is a paraphyletic branch of the Brown Bear but there has been no issue using it as a population in need of protection and flagship for work to mitigate climate change.

 

[Mysticete]

Well....I am sure part of the issue with why bird authorities like Birdlife don't like using subspecies is that bird subspecies have a history of being poorly defined. Many probably are invalid or represent units of a cline. Assigning conservation priorities to many of these "subspecies" would probably be a waste of resources.

If anything, I would say that mammals have the opposite problem. There is such a focus on preserving subspecies outside the context of taxonomy that it has actually made problems worse. A good chunk of the large animals (outside of white-tail deer) probably do not have valid subspecies, yet lots of money has been spent on saving Florida panthers, Desert Bighorn, etc. That doesn't even get in the Red Wolf situation, where a ton of money has been spent on what is likely a Coyote-wolf hybrid, or the killer whale situation, where various tenuous differents are used to treat every regional population of Resident whale as it's own ESU.

So yeah...from my experience, we shouldn't be emulating Mammals...especially given how little taxonomic work goes on in the group